newbie confused

[magicman]

hi guys i have two female pythons they are both feeding well about three mice aweek.they are very active. one of the females have shed in bits and peices the other female has a little bit of mucus when she opens her mouth, although her throat is clear i have the hot end set at ninety incase she has a cold and 79/80 at the cooler end i have cleaned the tank out top to bottom witha mite spray and also treated both my females ,i also used antibactirial spray and put fresh water every other day in the viv.
i have read many posts and many diffrent opinions on how to set up my viv where should the water bowl be placed at the hot end or the cool end of the enclosure

[muddoc]

Hello,

Your cool end temp is not bad, but you may consider trying to raise it a liite bit closer to 85 and raising your warm end a little bit closer to 95. As far as the water bowl, I keep mine on the cool end and have had no adverse conditions. However, by putting the bowl on the warm end, you may see a slight rise in your humidity, depending on what type of top is on your enclosure.

Sincerely,

[magicman]

i have a wooden constructed viv shop brought iu re homed these females from an animal rescue center near my home town in the uk the guy said it was all set up to go it had aspen in it ect but when i cleaned it out it had fecial matter in it and im wondering if it was in fested with mites as every day their are little black dots in the water i bath my females in a tepid bath at least once a week and used a mite spray on them both and the tank, i have had nothing but little problems since i have had them .im using cork bark have disinfected the bark once but is it safe enough to bake in the oven to kill off any other problems, i ment to say in my first post that the female with a slight cold i suspect went for a wee and a poo earlier yeaterday afternoon then in the evening she passed five brown ball wich looked to me like human fecias any ideas

[Shelby]

I hope they are not living in the same cage. Mucous means a respiratory infection, which can kill your snake if it goes untreated. If they live together, they most likely BOTH have a RI. Get them to a reptile vet ASAP for antibiotics.

Here is a directory of reptile vets http://www.arav.org/Directory.htm

If they have mites, get yourself a can of provent-a-mite.. nothing works better. You can get it here. http://www.mgreptiles.com/proventmite.html

Since they have mites, take them OFF of bark/aspen bedding. Put them on newspaper or paper towels. Take out any wood/porous materials in the cage. I would just toss them personally.. get new ones when they are well again.

[magicman]

hi thanks i have the other female quaranteened withina tub within the viv as i do not have a secound viv as i was told that when i rehomed the two females they would be perectly ok to keep them together i have treated the bark for mites and i will do so again today to doubaly make sure along with my two females


if i have been mislead then i will rectify this problem asap as would not like to unduely distress my babys

[frankykeno]

Unfortunately being in the UK those links aren't going to be useful. From what I've heard it's rather difficult to get P.A.M. through customs over there. You most definitely need to find a vet that has experience with snakes so you can determine whether one or both of them has an RI as well as what is available to you to properly treat the mites.

This link has only two UK vets listed and they may well hours away from you but perhaps a phone call to them will put you in connect with a vet that can treat your snakes and is a reasonable distance. We do have a number of members on BPNet from the UK so they may also be able to advise you of what is available over there.

http://www.anapsid.org/vets/vetcons.html#uk

It is best if you can permanently seperate the females as soon as possible as they really get no benefit from living together and you could end up with issues like spread of disease, being unable to determine which one is actually sick, having one dominante the other (this can be very subtle and often appears as if they are "cuddling" each other).

Here's our caresheet for ball pythons if you haven't had a chance to give it the once over. Also our Ball Python Husbandry forum has a lot of wonderful information and a very nice search engine so well worth the time to read up on some issues you might need to address for the wellbeing of your lovely snakes.

http://www.ball-pythons.net/modules....warticle&id=52

Welcome to the forum, we're glad you've found us and hope you enjoy your experience here. Please feel free to ask any questions without worrying about being judged...we're here to help and support your efforts to give the best possible life to the snakes you keep.

[magicman]

many thanks and i hope that all will turn out right in the end god knows how this guy ever passes rspca inspection the tank was sold to me a s ready to go ie turn everything on and put my balls in today fro the secound time i have cleared a load og gunk from the sides of the walls and tracks or the sliding doors sprayed and treated both tank and my balls with natures reptiles protector a part of a company called four paws based in hauppagge new york 11788 usa

dont know if this is any good and also have removed cork logs and have rerplaced it with a terracotta pot