Belly Heat Temperature

The ambient temp is a side effect of the UTH's ... If you have the UTH's at the right temps the ambient air temp should not be too different. Ball pythons can bask and "suck" heat from a given heat source (that's a really loose explanation), but the air that they breathe into their lungs has to be at the appropriate temps as well. You couldn't put a ball python on a heat pad in siberia and expect it to survive.

The thing that you have to remember is that ball pythons need a thermal gradiant. One side 90-95 the other side 82-84. Setting a tank up this way allows the temps between those two sides to settle in anywhere between ~82-94 and gives your snake a wide array of temperature to choose from. The idea is that since your snake can't tell you what temp it needs at any given moment, you provide it with a range of temps and let the snake figure out where he/she wants to be.

-adam

Great answer adam, thanks for the info. Im sorry if that was a stupid question but i have owned my BP for under a year and still have a lot to learn. Thanks for helping me :)

Man, I hate to sound like an 80 year old school teacher, but .... "There are no stupid questions" .... LOL .... Sounds like you're doing great so far!

-adam

It's actually a good point. It also makes me realize I need to do some adjusting to my tank!!!!!

What do you think would be too cool for air temp in the cage? Because my room is cold during the winter, so it's at around 70-75 air temp in the cage. Too cold? :(

I would say that its a little on the cold sign, my temp is right about at 80 on the cool side, making the warm side around 85-90. See if you cna keep the air temp closer to 80.

Cody, it might be a good time to add supplemental heat in some form or try to keep your room a little warmer with a space heater or something.

Ideally, you really want to try and keep the cool side 80-84 and hot side 90-95 year round. Sometimes it means heat sources on both sides of the enclosure or some type of room heater in the winter, but ball pythons will do much better if kept at those temps year round.

-adam

Do you really think its ok to put UTH's on both sides of the tank, i was thinking of doing that but didn't want the snake to not have a place to go to cool off if he wanted to. If that is not really an ussure i may do that so i can scrap my over tank heater which kills humidity. But i was always under the impression that there should always be a cool side.

I am positive that it's ok to put UTH's on both side of the tank ;)

A cool side of 82-84 would allow your ball python to get as cool as he'd ever need.

-adam