Sudden change of activity

[RoyalBlood20]

Hello,
Yesterday i noticed my 2 yr old ball python was out and about his enclosure (24x18x12 exoterra) and i was quite alarmed to see that as he was hiding 90% of the day up until this point. I went to check this morning on him, and he was still being very active, but more uncomfortable in my opinion. his temps havent changed(90 hot spot/79-85 ambient) humidy is 40-60%. i have two rbi medium sized hides and this is what i think my problem is. the hides are too small, he has gotten huge in the past few months and just recently grew too big for the hides. im wondering if he feels insecure because the hides are too small..i spent a half hour looking for any possible mites, and didnt find any. he didnt seem like he was verring towards his water dish to soak, so i guess thats good....just worried because this is pretty unusual. if anyone could share their input that would be great!!!

[butterballpython]

Change the hides and check your temperatures and humidity. Is it close to feeding day? My butter gets restless on Saturdays, then once he's had his rat, he's fine.

[RoyalBlood20]

well, somewhat. it may take sometime to switch the hides over as id have to get a bigger enclosure. the large rbi hides are LARGE when it comes to my bp, and id have to either get a 24 x24 or 36x18 just to accomodate those hides. i may look into vision cages really soon.

[butterballpython]

I recently changed out the hides for my champagne when I noticed her balled up under them, and they were raised off the ground because she's growing and they no longer fit her. She seemed perfectly content. This makes me think that it's probably not just the hides, but someone else could probably give you a better answer.

[RoyalBlood20]

thats what im thinking...my dads at home and hes been telling me hes been in his hide, which is good. i also read too that this is breeding season for bps, and hes a male...so idk if that explains anything.

[redshepherd]

Don't think this would help much, but my male BP went through this same kind of thing last November.. And temps, setup, nothing changed at all. It lasted for almost a full month(?) if I remember correctly, of daily surfing and hardly hiding at all. It also kind of stressed me out, because he was getting rubbing/scratches on his scales from scraping himself along the lid and sides of the tub every day. I changed up his hide sizes, smaller or bigger, changed his substrate, even tried changing his tub size to smaller/flatter, but nothing affected him!

He just eventually stopped doing it and went back to hiding like a normal BP one day for no apparent reason and never did it again. o_O

[RoyalBlood20]

thats crazy!!! yeah so far my pops has been updating me all day bc ive been stressing out lol he ALWAYS is in hiding. never comes out unless he smells a rat.

[melcvt00]

Make sure he didn't poop in a hide. Mine won't go back in if he has. Last time he had pooped, peed, and shed in there.