General advice on setup/ nutrition/ first timer tips

Hey everyone,

Just ordered everything online. Should be delivered soon! Very excited for my first BP. I'll purchase the BP when everything is set up perfectly (temp and humidity).

I would like advice on what people put in the water bowl? I've read some people put different nutrients and vitamins n stuff in the water bowl and I'm unsure what to put. Any suggestions would be great.

Here is my set up.
Exo Terra cage 24x18x12 (too big for a baby bp?)
Dual light bulb fixture. Day and night, with automatic on off switch.
Ultratherm uth heater with controller (too much heat with lamp already?)
2 hides, warm and cool
Water bowl
Coconut husk bedding
Two thermometers/hygrometer one for each side. (Also how do you guys keep the humidity at good levels?)
Light stand.
Tongs for feeding

From what I've found this is pretty much everything plus the auto switches that people get.

What product is good for the water bowl? I know bottled spring water, but do people add stuff to it?

Also tips on keeping humidity in?

Does anyone recommend reptilering.com for purchase? I want a cool morph with a low price.

Also is frozen mice typically the way to go?

I know it's a lot but it would be greatly appreciated! If I'm missing something or you have a good tip for a first timer. Please feel free to educate!!!

For water, just give your snake whatever water you drink yourself. Tap water should be fine in most places. Bp nutrition is really simple because they eat whole rodents, which means they everything they need in one furry package. You don't need to add extra vitamins minerals or supplements to the water. If the prey was healthy, it is a balanced diet all by itself.

Your track might be scary for a baby that has only lived in a tiny tub before, but you can make it less so by cluttering it up with extra hides, fake plants, etc, and by covering the back and sides with paper or cardboard to make it less exposed. A baby should be fine in there as long as it has plenty of cover.

How much heat you need will depend on the temperature of your room, so the only way to know is to plug in and find out, then adjust as necessary. You don't need a separate day/night bulb; if there's a window in the room the snake can tell when it's day and night, and will sleep in a hide all day anyway.

For humidity, the first thing to do is cover up as much of the screen lid as you can except for where the light fixture is. If you only use one bulb on one side of the fixture you can cover even more. Aluminum foil works well for that. There will still be enough ventilation, you just want to keep the humidity from escaping quite as fast. After you've done that, see where you are and if you need to do more, such as misting or adding sphagnum moss or a humid hide, etc.

Keep in mind that your needs for heat and humidification may change as the seasons change, and you'll find that out as you go.

Make sure you use a thermostat with your uth, don't put very much substrate over top of it, and make sure that the surface of the glass never gets too hot even if it's covered - sometimes snakes dig down and then get hurt.

Good luck! 😃

Perfect, thank you!

I forgot about making sure the glass doesnt get too hot!

You want to emulate what the breeder does for easy transition and ensuring that the animal eats for you, that means identical setup, SAME prey so if live mouse offer live mouse if live rat offer live rat, switching will not be your priority.

Here is how to get started http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-hatchling-101

So you recommend feeding outside its enclosure? Live if its been eating live. Frozen if frozen.

Do you think i purchased too much stuff for a hatchling?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deborah

You want to emulate what the breeder does for easy transition and ensuring that the animal eats for you, that means identical setup, SAME prey so if live mouse offer live mouse if live rat offer live rat, switching will not be your priority.

Here is how to get started http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-hatchling-101

---

So you recommend feeding outside its enclosure? Live if its been eating live. Frozen if frozen.

Do you think i purchased too much stuff for a hatchling?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ptshay

So you recommend feeding outside its enclosure? Live if its been eating live. Frozen if frozen.

Do you think i purchased too much stuff for a hatchling?

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Never feed outside the enclosure, it can stress the animal and you do not want to move an animal in feeding mode trust me.

Live if live, F/T if F/T yes. If fe live you want to continue for 3 to 5 feeding before switching.

And yes you probably bought too much, enclosure too big so not a great starter, I will guess the thermometer are analogue (which are junk), but it's not unusual, sometimes you just need to forget everything you think you know especially when buying an hatchling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deborah

Never feed outside the enclosure, it can stress the animal and you do not want to move an animal in feeding mode trust me.

Live if live, F/T if F/T yes. If fe live you want to continue for 3 to 5 feeding before switching.

And yes you probably bought too much, enclosure too big so not a great starter, I will guess the thermometer are analogue (which are junk), but it's not unusual, sometimes you just need to forget everything you think you know especially when buying an hatchling.

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Ah ok ok cool. that was something i heard growing up a lot, but further research has denoted it as a myth.
actually the thermometer/ hygrometer are digital ;-P

So, considering i kinda paid a lot for the cage, should I just make sure to put paper around the corners/ lots of faux flora? the two hides should be good, I just need to make sure they're small enough.
The lights I got were:
Exo Terra Sun-Glo Basking Spot Lamp

Exo Terra Night-Glo Moonlight A19 Lamp


the thermometer is:
Exo Terra Digital Combination Thermometer/Hygrometer



both for the warm side. so you're saying a UTH would be sufficient for both?





thank you again for your help.

It sounds like you really care about your future BP and are trying to do things right, and we all appreciate that here for sure. I started out similarly with an Exo-terra glass cage, dual top lights, etc. and had a hard time getting my first BP to eat and calm down until I moved him into a shoebox tub with nothing but a small hide, water dish, and UTH with a good thermostat. The most expensive thing I ended up buying was a nice thermostat (A Herpstat). The rest cost me about $15 in total and made him much happier than all the other things I had bought. Eventually I got a PVC cage (an Animal Plastics T8) and divided it in half and put my BP on one sided and added another BP to the other side.

My honest advice is to return what you bought if you can. It was more money than you needed to spend on a BP and won't provide them their ideal environment for growing up. If you can't return it, you can certainly make it work, but you need to do a lot of reading in the husbandry forum on how to make a baby BP feel secure. My recommendation is a small plastic tub, UTH, and a decent proportional thermostat. If you want to start out with something nice and that can be a forever home to your BP, take a look at a PVC cage. Lots of info about this in the stickies at the top of the husbandry forum.

Welcome and good luck with your future BP!

Another suggestion, if you like having a tank you can see into instead of a shoe box, is to start out with your baby a shoe box, with the tub inside the tank. Then after a week or two, cut a hole in the lid of the tub and leave it in the tank. Put a hide and a water dish inside the tub, as well as a hide and a water dish and some fake plants and stuff outside the tub as well. That way your baby can get used to the larger space (which it will probably only explore at night when it's sure no one's watching!) But still have its old familiar tub when it wants. You can set up the uth and lights so that they keep the tank where it needs to be, and the tub will be fine. You can even set the tub half over the uth and half not, so that there is an accessible temperature gradient both inside and outside.