length of tank

Curiousity had got the best of me. I have seen mentioned several times that the tank should be the length of the snake so he can stretch out all the way. Well, ummm, anyone ever see a snake perfectly straight? Don't they usually have some curl to them? Dobby is longer than the 10 gallon and I have yet to see him stretch all the way from one side to another.

The general rule of thumb with ball pythons is that floorspace should be about 1 foot greater than the length of the snake. That means that an 18" little ball can happily live in just about 2.5 sq ft of floorspace, give or take, and a fully grown female at 5' long should have around 6' of floorspace, so a 3'x2' or similar dimensions will be perfectly adequate for a big female.