New python feeding

My wife has corrected me, the hap less clerk said they fed the snakes crickets every morning. Juan Pablo has never soaked in water, as far as we know. Although there was a milk snake at the pet store that seems to live in his water bowl. Will take advice to look for mites and visit vet when he defecates. Store was PETCO.

30 gallon aquarium with locking screen top, 60W red heat lamp on left side. bark substrate. two thermoters & one hygrometer. from lf to rt : synthetic rock hide, very small sythetic rock water dish for humidity control, one log hide, one climbing branch, several fake grass/leaf structures surrounding one cereal bowl sized water bowl as a cool area hide. Maintaining 84 / 75 with 60% humidity.

Crickets?! Did he actually take one? I thought that Bps only would accept warmblooded mammals like mice or rats.
I would hold off feeding for a week or so, until he gets accustomed to his new home. It can be very stressful to try feeding a new arrival when it does not know its surroundings well.

Welcome to the site glad you dropped in - your BP will thank you too.


Crix . . . that is bizarre and sad - we see an awful lot of depraved "care" doled out in some of thses pet stores, man, yikes.

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30 gallon aquarium with locking screen top, 60W red heat lamp on left side. bark substrate. two thermoters & one hygrometer. from lf to rt : synthetic rock hide, very small sythetic rock water dish for humidity control, one log hide, one climbing branch, several fake grass/leaf structures surrounding one cereal bowl sized water bowl as a cool area hide. Maintaining 84 / 75 with 60% humidity.

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Sounds like you're off to a good start. I would just make a few suggestions:

1. Ditch the analog dials (which, unfortunately, are not the least bit accurate) and get yourself a nice digital unit that measures all of that at once. You can find one at Walmart for $15 or less that measures the warm side, cool side, and humidity all at once. It also records the highest and lowest temperatures so you can see if the temps are dropping too much at night or whatever. You won't regret that purchase!

2. Also from Walmart, you can get an inexpensive human heating pad. Make sure it does NOT have an auto-shutoff. Raise the tank up a bit with little rubber feet on the bottom and slide the heating pad beneath the warm side. Monitor the temps closely. This will provide the belly heat that is more appropriate for a bp's digestion. You may or may not still need the heat lamp, depending on your ambient room temps.

3. You need to raise the temps of your warm side and cool side by about 5* each. Humidity looks good, but it's hard to say with the dial thingies.

That's SO sad that Petco was so stupid with their animals. If they keep that up, they will starve a lot of critters. If I were in your shoes, I would notify the management (going as high up the chain as I needed to go) that they are selling animals without training their employees in even the most basic husbandry care.

Wow. Ive said it before and Ill say it again. Pet stores ignorance, stupidity, and apathy never cease to amaze me...
I'm going to call the humane society pretty quick here on one of my local pet stores.
They havnt fed any of the ball pythons since 4/15/04
They are just hatchlings too. Skinny as corn snakes.
They also have poor conditions for their rainbow pythons and a blood with what looks to be an RI because of the lack of humidity.
Those poor things....
I hate pet stores...
(matter of fact I am going to call them today)

This is the same pet store I rescued Bones from. He was too skinny, had some very bad sheds and some scale rot. I got them to knock the price down alot. I wouldnt buy from them unless I knew they werent making a profit.

grrrrr :evil:

PetCo Strikes again.

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Originally Posted by gozetec02

PetCo Strikes again.

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Anyone surprised?

I agree with JLC on her suggestions. Especially about the digital thermometer. You'll be surprised at how inaccurate those other things are. And definitely raise your temps. Cool side should be 80, warm side 90. Sounds like you're off to a good start!

Several people here made coments about checking you new pet for parasites, and i couln't agree more. I know this post started out as just a feeding question and i hope you got some good information from that. But I am concerned for you new buddy and i want to see him/her grow up big and strong. You can look for external parasites yourself get a flashlight and use it to go up and down his body looking for ticks which will appear bright red and mites will glow a similar way.

Seems to me like instead of buying a ball python you rescued him from neglect and thats A ok in my book.

Post some pics of your buddy if you get a chance it would be cool to see what he look like since each one has a different patern.

Earlier this year I had to explain to the reptile "experts" at my local Petland that the baby BCI's in fact did not eat crickets until they were older, and that if they insisted on feeding them crickets, they probably would not get older.

They were astonished that those little snakes would actually eat mice, but when they tried it, guess what, Boa Contrictors aren't insectivors. Go figure.

The store SELLS books on how to care for your BCI. It just doesn't READ books on how to care for your BCI.

Heaven help any reptile in a mainstream pet store.

K