Temperature

[ScottS]

I would like to query you breeders on your opinion of the ideal temperature for ball pythons. I don't want "the cool side should be this and the warm side should be that", I've read that a thousand times. In a snake room with dozens or hundreds of open sided racks, obviously the room is at a certain temperature as are all the snakes. What is that temperature? Anybody willing to stick their neck out and give me a number. It would be useless for me to do a search for temperature, I'd get thousands of hits. Yet I've never read a post giving a specific temperature. My guess is that it would be something around 86 to 88 degrees.

[Alter-Echo]

Problem is, most racks have heat tape to provide a hot spot for the snakes of around 87-90f, but the snakes need to have the ability to escape that heat when they aren't digesting or resting. If you kept a snake room at those temps the snakes would overheat and die of stress eventually. You keep the room lower than that with no hot spot and the snakes won't digest food properly and will again die. So you really do need a range of temps for the snakes to have access to for them to function properly.

Room temp would need to be adjusted based on the power of your heat source.

[Godzilla78]

I run my snake room around 77. The heat tape is around 91. The rack is enclosed and the radiating heat coming off the heat tape, gets trapped in the enclosed wood rack, which is just enough to bring the ambient tub temps to 80.
Perfection.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

In a snake room using ambient temp only my temps are in the mid 80's (I do that 8 to 9 months out of the year)

[Sonny1318]

I prefer a little cooler 84 to 86. And yes a gradient, so 78 to 80. Ambient around 80 to 82. But I understand what your saying, Debra gave you a great answer. I know a couple big time old school breeders that do similar.

[Godzilla78]

Ive never done it, but ive heard of breeders keeping open racks in 84 degree rooms, like Deb and Sonny describe.


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[Never3]

Hey Debra, I need a bit of advice.
So I just got my new rack built and set up, but I'm still having some issues.
The first issue is that I'm having trouble stabilizing the humidity. It's too high.
And the second issue is that I'm having a hard time getting the temps up to the desired range.
The rack is an open air design that I found on ssscales. I've got the T stat set at 89, but the tub temp reads 81 on the warm side and 71 0n the cool side.
I don't know what's wrong, but this is seriously frustrating!!!!
oh, and the room temp is 68. Any help would be greatly appreciated.