Herp vs Human heating pad?

I say spend alittle more on your tstat. I had a hydrofarm once for a temporary tub setup. It died in just a couple months. Good waste of thirty bucks.

I say do it right the first time.

The big issue with hydrofarms is hysteresis accuracy and backlash.

They are rated to 2ºC up or down (4ºF give or take) 3º more hysteresis and then back lash. I would never suggest one as anything but a back up. They are designed to heat dirt. I would suggest due to the questionable accuracy (4+3=7ºF on the bad side if it is in spec) that a reliable accurate thermometer be also required and one of reasonable accuracy say 1º of correct. Makes sense right. So 30$ for a T-stat and 100+ for a thermometer. It is a poor choice neither cost effective or very reliable good unit.

For a first ball python in a glass tank, I'd go with the ZooMed/zilla/exoterra/known brand reptile-specific under tank heating pad. Spend the money. Heat is the most important thing after water and hides. You can use that on a tub too, if you haven't got a full rack.

Make sure you match the size of the pad to the size of the tank. You do NOT need a giant pad for a 15 gallon tank. If you're having a problem keeping the ambient air temps warm, buy some styrofoam at an art store and glue it to 3 sides of the tank for insulation, and throw a towel or a blanket over screen. You can leave an inch open for air circulation.

Even reptile-specific heating pads often get dangerously hot if they have nt power regulation. So you will need some kind of thermostat.

For a cheap thermostat option, go to Home Depot and get a "table-top lamp dimmer". They're $10 or so in the lighting section. Lowe's has them too, but they're twice as expensive for whatever reason. With the Home Depot model, note that it's weirdly backwards, and the green light turns on in the OFF position. The farther you are from the green light, more power your heating pad is receiving. You can play with that until you get the glass/plastic right above the heating pad to a nice 95F or so. If it's hot to the touch for you, it's definitely too hot for the reptile, so dial it down.

The bulb lamp will work just fine for keeping the temps up, as long as you've matched the wattage to the tank size. You want one of the red nighttime/heat bulbs for a snake, because it'll be on all night. White lights will confuse them about the day/night cycle.

Make sure the bulb is resting over the screen, at least an inch away from the anywhere the snake can reach. They can and will burn themselves on exposed lights.

The major problem with heat lamps is humidity. Heat lamps really dry things out. Ball pythons are pretty tolerant of low humidity until they go into shed, and then it's just a mess. It's super hard to boost the humidity adequately for a shedding ball python with a heat lamp. The rest of the time they work fine. They're great if you've got a cold house or a sick snake.

Use caution when using a rheostat (dimmer). Yes they can reduce the power and therefor the heat from a UTH but they are dumb devices. What I mean by that is they don't track temps or know what's going on like a tstat. If the temp of your home or just the tank goes up, like during the day with day time heat the dimmer will continue to deliver the same amount of power and the UTH can easily get to hot. You will find yourself constantly messing with it trying to get it dialed in, but it never will.

These work far better for bulbs. In my experience using them with a UTH is just to risky.