Ball Python Care

Oh yeah that could be a problem. Masking tape is no good for that sort of thing. Aluminum or foil tape (which you can get at Lowes or Home Depot) is actually the best, as it conducts heat much better than duct tape.

So we have added an infrared heatlamp.. We could not find a thermostat and a rheostat was 50 bucks... I highly doubt that is a reasonable price, but I havent taken a good look. We also added a second digital thermometer that is probed right into the heated cave, the other one is outside on the cool side.

The reading on the digital one is 90.1 F in side the cave, (I has been gradually going up, we added it about 2 hours ago)

Should I do something to prevent this from going up any further, or will our snake know that it is too hot and switch sides?
The cool side says 73.6 F but it does not have a probe thing, it is just an open air thermometer and hygrometer.

What do you guys suggest?

I was thinking we could maybe aim the infrared bulb more towards the cool side, as it isnt directly on the mesh of the tank. It is about 3-4" above it.

If a rheostat or thermostat is absolutely necessary, do you guys have any suggested ones, or links to a Canadian reptile website that would sell then for a reasonable price?

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Originally Posted by DarrinLowe

Thank you for these links,

From what I have read it could be a number of things.

Would you suggest not moving him from the cage to his box, as one of those states that they do not become aggressive if you feed them in their cage.

I personally have always suspected that the temperature in his cage / the humidity is too low, but currently we do not have anything to measure this, we do have one of those heaters that stick to the underside of the cage, but it is not very big. I will try to obtain a digital thermometer today, if I can afford it. (Petland likes to jack their prices) (No we didnt get the snake from petland, it was from a reptile store that breeds them)

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try to pick up an inexpensive hygrometer... like at petsmart or petco $6.00 it will tell you the humidity. i hear digital is the best but can be expensive. maybe amazon? or search prices online is what i do. the humidity is SO important. needs to be around 50%. when digesting food and shedding, it needs to be 70-80%. this helps with the shedding process and helps very much w/the digestion after eating. temperature and humidity are very important. good luck : )

We do have a hygrometer, built into our cool side thermometer. When we added our infrared heat lamp, it was aimed directly at the heated side cave, and the humidity went down to about 45%, but I moved it a little to the middle as our cool side was only 75 F and the heated side was going up to 90F really fast, since moving it the humidity is back up at 50 (It is aimed at the water dish)

Yup, thermostats are expensive. Fifty bucks is about the average price unfortunately :( Not sure if you use Amazon or not, but if you type in rheostat in the search it should pull up a zoo med rheostat for $20 and a 500R thermostat for $30. Either of those should work fine if you need them. The main difference between the two is that a rheostat is just essentially a "dimmer" and with a thermostat you can fine tune the temp.

What size infrared bulb did you get? And how big is your tank? I usually only use a 40 or 50 watt bulb and I have a 50 gallon tank, and it works fine. Yeah, definitely put your heat bulb over the cool side. If you already have a heat pad for the warm side then you don't need anything more than that haha The heat bulb will get your cool side/ambient temps up in no time.

Are you providing any belly heat, or is all your heat from lamps?

If all your heat is from lamps, you are going to be fighting humidity all the time. I ditched my glass tank and the lamps (thank goodness) for a tub with belly heat.

Temps and humidity were excellent and care was pain free. Additionally, belly heat aids in digestion. And ball pythons don't require special lighting, since they are nocturnal animals.

Most of my animals would NOT eat if I transferred them to a different enclosure for feeding. I feed over 50 ball pythons weekly in their enclosures, and have no issues with them being aggressive when it's not feeding day. I like the aggressive eagerness to eat on feeding day though! :)

We do have a heat pad attached to the underside of the tank. That was providing our initial heat before we noticed that it was too low.

The bulb is 50W, and the holder supports up to 75W. So I think everything is alright there.

But yeah, everything seems fairly okay. My main concern is mediating the heat, but I guess my only real options are a rheostat, or thermostat.

I work all day, and my girlfriend is at school while I work so there is a 7 hour period where we have to turn the lamp off, because we are not sure how high the heat is going to go.

ATM I am down to the last of my pay check, (Thank you Calgary Police) so I cannot afford a thermostat or rheostat. But we will try to arrange something as soon as possible.

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0.1 fancy normal ball "Karma"
1.2 corns - bloodred "Jambi", creamsicle okeetee "Aurora", snow "Luna"
1.0 striped california king "Nyx"
0.1 orange tiger crested gecko "Ember"

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What do those numbers mean, is that like... 0 females . 1 male? or age...? lol.

I've been really curious about that, everyone seems to have them.

It refers to the sex of the animal. If a number is on the right side of the . it's how many females they have, and to the left is male. And then sometimes there's a third number like 2.3.1 and that would be an animal that is unsexed. So 2.3.1 would mean 2 males, 3 females and 1 unknown.

I know, it's kinda confusing at first haha ;)