Hi I'm new here and worried about my ball :(

If you're concerned about the UTH being too hot, I'm not sure I'd put him on paper towels unless I had the UTH unplugged. The eco-earth will at least give a layer of insulation if you're still looking to monitor the UTH temp for a bit longer. You could even burn some of that humidity away with a desk clamp-lamp for the time being.

BUT if he's already showing signs of burning, paper towel/newspaper is probably best until that heals up. I'll reiterate though, make sure the UTH is properly maintained before even thinking about putting him on a thinner substrate.

I would, go with paper towels for now, make sure they stay dry. Once you get the humidity down to the proper levels in the enclosure, you can regulate it by misting (don't soak the paper towels). Place your thermometer on the heat pad under the tank. Watch that with the change in substrate the surface temps in the enclosure don't go too high.

Ok I got the Eco earth out so now I place the probe on the outside of the tank underneath the UTH ? Or in the tank where I had it over the UTH? I jus wanna make sure the glad doesn't get too cold if he roams around at night with paper towel being down I could take the tank upstairs and that might help the ambient temp a bit. And clean up with this Eco earth is a pain I think I am going to get aspen when I can jus keep using paper towels for now.

taking the tank upstairs into a more controlled environment would always be better. You place the temp probe between the UTH and the bottom of the tank. And yes you can use paper towels or news paper as long as you want. Remember aspen bedding can cause the same problems as eco earth. I wouldn't use any particulate or loose substrate. When you open a photobucket account it will have an upload option so you can browse your phone like a PC and select which photos you want put in your account. Then you follow the instructions in the stickies in the photos section of this website to copy and paste them in your posts.

Ok well it's upstairs step up now I'm letting it warm up was not sure how many layers of paper towel to put down jus put one down for now I got some pics of his belly the best I could with my phone I had my girl hold him. But upstairs it says the normal temp is about 71 :/ I don't know if I should keep it up here or what. I do have a room heater so I could always turn that on up here to kick it up a couple of degrees idk I feel like everything I do makes one thing worse lmao I'm really trying to get it rite for him so far the cold side of the tank is at 73 degrees , the humidity has been at 58 the whole time up here Jus went down to 57 The heat pad is at 88-89 degrees I hope moving up here will fix things so I can get everything tuned in the rite way thank you guys once again for dealing with me and being so helpful

Don't lose hope just yet, haha. We were all newbies once, working on correcting our mistakes. The good thing is that you're here asking questions and getting feedback. That's what the site is here for. Ask any question that comes to mind, there's no such thing as a dumb one as long as it gives you information you need to know! Best of luck! =]

Hi, welcome! Ok, first off, take a deep breath and chill out. You're going to get a lot of conflicting advice, so try not to run around crazy changing everything every time someone posts. You are working on making things better, so a few days at sub-optimal aren't going to cause major damage to your snake. I'm going to pretend your snake is still downstairs because that's where the most info is coming from...

UTH- good, you've got that on a dimmer and are monitoring temperatures. That is very very important. Make sure you don't need to reduce your UTH heat now that there's nothing much between him and the glass- the thermometer probe can sit right on top of the paper towels.

Humidity levels- Ok, now that you've changed from Eco-earth to paper towels, you will need to give it a day or 2 to figure out your new levels. Relax, he isn't sitting in wet and if he is about to shed, humidity in the 70s is good.

Ambient temperatures: Right now it's pretty chilly for the long term, but ok for short term. You said you had a hide over his UTH, the air is probably a bit warmer in there. If he's cold, he'll go there. I have a 50 watt night glo bulb heating a 20 gallon tank, and it is almost enough, but it was perfect when i had a 10 gallon. It just bumps up the heat a few degrees.

How heat and humidity interact: You are measuring relative humidity. That is a ratio of how much water vapor is in the air to how much water vapor the air can hold. When the heat increases, the air can hold more water vapor so the relative humidity drops and the air feels drier. You may find your humidity levels go down once you have your ambient temperatures better controlled. The other side of this is that added moisture cools air temperature. You may find that by using paper towels your humidity levels drop and ambient temperatures rise a bit. Remember, every time you change one the other will change, and you need to give it a bit of time to adjust.

Unused Eco-earth: do you have Craigslist? Someone uses it and will jump at a bargain. Or see if someone at the pet store you got it at wants to buy it. I was talking to the reptile dude at one of our local pet stores about looking for a cheap 20 gallon, turns out he was keeping a tarantula in one and wanted a 10, we traded that night when he got off work.

You're doing fine, stop panicking. Within 3 weeks of adjusting you'll have everything settled. :)

Thank you so much ultraviolet I definitely needed to calm down. Even tho I did move him upstairs for now in a couple weeks I might try moving him back down here but in the room he is in upstairs worked out perfectly. His hot spot was around 90 humidity was at 56 for a while but slowly went down to 54 and the cold side of his tank went up to 80 after I warmed up the room with a heater it was chilly in there but once it gets warm in there it stays heated very well usually. So as for now I'm going to check on his belly and see if it gets better once I get on my computer tomorrow I will post pics of his belly its hard to get a clean shot off my phone but I got the best I could. Anyways thank you everyone once again for all the info yes I did run around a little bit but now my fears are at bay I definitely feel alot better I'm going to let him get used to it for a while. Feeding day will be on Saturday I got some hoppers for him they didn't have any mice where I went :/ but tomorrow I will post the pics I got and give an update how the set up is going :)

No worries, I think we've probably all run around a little crazy at one point or another! It's good you're concerned, good you're asking, and good you're taking advice! Sounds like things are more under control now, I'm looking forward to pictures!

Lets not make sweeping assumptions about certain substrate choices, shall we?

Reesy, I'd love for you to point me in the direction of experiences you or others might have had with substrate impaction in ball pythons from eco-earth, because I have never seen any evidence to suggest the claims you make to be true.

I've read threads of snakes dying from accidentally ingesting paper towels though, soo are you going to tell me that eco-earth is more or less dangerous than paper towels?

Substrate is a personal preference. The only substrate you should avoid is CEDAR. I've used many substrates including paper towel, eco earth, cypress mulch, aspen, indented kraft paper, and news paper. Cypress mulch and indented kraft

Even then, I have rarely, if EVER heard of a ball python becoming impacted from slight substrate ingestion.


While I agree we shouldn't be teaching newbies bad habits, I also believe we shouldn't use hypothetical situations as scare tactics for why we should not use a certain substrate. Do you seriously think all ball pythons in the wild are dying left and right due to impaction? Because I'm pretty sure they lay on a substrate very similar to eco earth all day everyday. Its called dirt.


I'm certain the discoloration around the mouth is not due to the substrate choice, but the natural coloration of the snake. It gets darker as they age. it freaked me out with my first snake but eventually I realized it was normal.