Got my 1st BP

I just picked up my very first ball python. It's a lemon blast. He weighs 466 grams. Pictures will come in a week after I leave him be for a week.



There's just 1 thing. I don't know if it's my cage or what I did but for some reason my hygrometer probe is telling me it's 70% humidity in my cage. 80 degrees on the cool side and the hot hide is at 91 degrees. My BP doesn't want to use his hides either.

Thanks in advance for any advice you all will give me.

Oh the cage is Animal Plastics T13 cage.

Nice first bp:gj:

Congrats on your new ball python :)

Depending on where he came from he may not know the hides are hides just yet. Leave him alone, he'll figure it out.

Nice choice on a first BP!:gj:

What are you using for a heat source? undertank heater? lamp?
And is it being controlled by a thermostat?

Sorry I forgot to mention all that stuff. I apologize. Before I posted this thread I was up since 3:30 this morning.

He is on Aspen, I have a spyder robotics thermostat, flexwatt heat tape that came with the enclosure, BIG water bowl(which is what I assume is causing the high humidity), 4 hides(which he chooses NOT to use. I don't blame him though. 2 are too small and the other 2 I think are perfect but I don't know.) and a log and a few fake plants, and 3 fluecent(sp?) lights to light the cage.

When I woke up this afternoon/night I checked his temps. He is now on the cold side laying behind the waterbowl. I guess he's using the waterbowl as his "hide". Humidity is now 74% in there. Im thinking of taking the waterbowl out and replacing it with just a clear plastic bowl from my kitchen in hopes of taking the humidity down in there.



I would also like to thank BRB Reptiles and the wonderful staff that I talked to today. Excellent people and very nice people to talk to. They seem to love what they do and you can tell by the animals that they produce.

Ok I dumped out his waterbowl and refilled it with fresh water but just half of what I had it. The humidity has gone down so Im really happy about that. I cranked up the thermostat to 96 degrees because when I touched Templar he felt cold to the touch. So, Im hoping that bumps up the ambient temps so he's less stressed.

I did get struck at already. I turned off the light that is in the back of the cage and he was sitting around it. I got away with no bite marks but I know he's stressed out because I keep opening up his cage and checking temps and touching him and all that stuff.

Any other advice for a newbie? I'll be making a trip tomorrow to my local exotic pet shop to pick up a little bigger hides and replacing all the ones I currently have and picking up a few more plants to make the enclosure feel more secure.

He has to feel somewhat secure because when you walk into my room and turn on the light, the cage Templar is in is all blacked out in the back. You have to pretty much press your face against the glass in order to see inside it if I don't turn on the lights that are in the tank.

Oh, and yes. I am a BIG Templar Knights nerd. Favorite thing in history to talk about and read about.

The first thing is to take a deep breath and relax. :D The more you fret over him and his tank, the more he's gonna stress out. Your temps in the beginning were perfect, you should get them back to the 90 hot/80 ambient. Sometimes Loki feels a little cool, but you have to remember that they're cold-blooded: if you have the right temps in your enclosure, he'll be fine. As for the hides, x2 on what LGrey23 said, he probably doesn't know they're hides yet. He'll figure it all out. :gj:

Congrats on your new Ball! I second the need for pics when he's settled in.

Snakes should feel cold to the touch, because relative to us, our body temps are higher then snakes. It's when they're warm to the touch, that you should likely be concerned. Just make sure your temps and humidity are fine.

To get that humidity down, you can use a heat lamp. But please buy a dimmer for it. You can get one at Lowes or home depot for $10. Those things running on full blast, make everything too hot. Plus it will kill too much humidity and it will drive you nuts. And use it as supplemental heat for ambient and cold side temps. Your UTH should be heating the hot side. What kind of bulb are you using. They can't see the black/blue/red bulbs. But the regular bulbs bother them.

Im using no bulbs. I'm just using flexwatt. Problem with getting a heat lamp is - the top of my cage is solid. There are no holes/screens. So, I dunno if putting the heat lamp directly on top of the cage and pointing the bulb directly down will do anything to snag that humidity and heat the cooler side. Animal Plastics T13 cage with a solid top.

Oh ok, gotcha, must have misread.

:D. Any other reccommendations to zap some of my humidity?

As for your humidity reading goes, I wouldn't be too stressed at this point, but if you can find another hygrometer or two or borrow from anyone, to compare with, that'll be best. Hygrometer probe, I'm guessing its digital? I hate digital hygrometers even more so with probes, they give me very strange readings. But if it is indeed 70% humidity, I think it shouldn't be a problem unless its causing your enclosure to get wet and gets condensation. If its dry and at 70% it shouldn't pose a problem for them, and they'll get a clean shed everytime.

I recently started a thread on this wondering whats the best to measure humidity since my digital probes are so useless, and stating that my cheap analog ones were much more consistant and accurate. I quote kitademon's response:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kitedemon

I use analogue I have also found that digital ones painfully poor I get readings that are more than 50% apart with some of mine. The things I look for are actually easy a well mounted 'number card' The ones sold for reptiles are often paper and not well mounted so they move. The other thing I look for is a calibration screw so if I test it (salt test is easy EASY and accurate) and it is wrong it can be corrected. I found this one (western instruments brass faced one http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita.../dp/B0007VWEQA), to be very good out of the box, accurate and consistant (I have 7 all read within 5%) the digital ones are all over the board no two read closer than 7% and many or farther than 20% I can live with 7 but 20 is a bit much.



There are very accurate digital ones avaliable but must be serviced before use and be perfectly clean, they really would be to complicated to use in relation to reptiles and too costly to toss when it was no longer working (http://www.thomassci.com/Instruments...ature-Meter/?=)

---

Thank you Ogden. I just ordered two of those hygrometers.

Just a little heads up for anyone else who is interested. Templar is finally in one of the hides I have in the cage. The humidity is down to 60% and the temps are correct. Im so glad that he has calmed down and is relaxing in his hide.

okay. first off, take pictures of your setup. 1 birds eye view should be good enough. I recommend using paper towel instead of bedding for a BP. My BP Mitch LOVES paper towels, they are easy to clean, change, and there's no odors from shavings. Also your tank might be too big. The smaller the tank, the better. I have a 20L tank and i can barely fit a water dish and 2 hides, if you have 4 hides and a big water dish that might be a little too big of an enclosure.

Also to help your snake adjust there is an awesome trick someone taught me from these fourms. Take newspaper and roll individual sheets into loosely crinkled paper balls. then drop a bunch of them in the tank. Then every day or 2 take one piece out at a time. Sounds stupid but it works.

Ill be posting pictures today when I get back from shopping with the girlfriend.

As far as the tank situation goes, I think I did a good job filling up the tank with a bunch of stuff in order to make it "feel" smaller, but when I post pictures you all can give me ideas to what else I can do.

I think for now, it sounds like a pretty decent setup, if maybe a little big. I would recommend just leaving everything the heck alone for a week or two. Just change the water every three four days maybe, otherwise IGNORE it. Unless there's an emergency, he can live with a little inconvenience. Letting him get used to the new smells of your place, getting used to a new human monster that's going to be poking and prodding him will help him a lot. Sometime this is even more important than having the temps one or two degrees off!

As a side thing, I would recommend grabbing an Iris brand tub in about a 15- 20 gallon size and soldering some hole in it for aeration and building a "mini cage" setup with it. Get a zoomed dimmer, an ultratherm under tank heater and a temp gun, as well as a couple hides and a 4-5" ceramic cooking ramekin. These things are relatively inexpensive and very portable! I put all my babies in really simple setups and I always have a TON of extra hides. I make most of mine from microwave lasagna dishes, they are black and lightweight and super easy to melt a door into with a soldering iron! Or RBI sells some good hides for most sizes for balls, babies love the mini size.
This way, you can experiment with humidty and temps without messing with your snake's cage and if you can obtain better results with this, you can move him into a smaller, better contained environment. If the cage works out fine, then no problem, you've got a really easy to transport setup and backup cage in case you need to bring him to the vet or take him to another location in case of a power outage. I have carriers and emergency supplies for all my pets, including my snakes! They mean just as much to me as my cats and dog and having that stuff clean and ready to go means I don't worry about disasters as far as mu snakes are involved! My house occasionally loses power in winter and the first few years, i really stressed about the snakes getting too cold. I had those shipping heat packs, but didn't have enough tubs to transport the snakes in. I have since found a few friends without their own reptiles who are willing to keep the snakes if they have electricity while my power is out! I just return the favor by babysitting their dogs while they are out of town.

Also, this is my quarantine setup for new snakes. The tubs are really easy to clean and I always have a few back up ramekins and hides of the same kind as are in the snake's cage so I can bleach & scrub them if they get poop on them!

Sorry to ramble, but I have noticed how fussy my first ball is compared to my later animals. It is probably not JUST because I was always freaking out over him, but I bet that didn't help! He has since mellowed out, but I'm pretty sure my inexperience and worry didn't do him too many favors while he was young. I wish you the best of luck and just don't worry too much about the details right now. Everything will work out, you just have to fine tune and probably spend a chunk of change getting everything squared away! XD (That's the last lesson. These guys pretty much never stop costing money, ha ha!)

Sorry all. I'll be posting pictures tomorrow of Templar and his new mansion. I went today and got 2 new hides and now Im done messing with his cage. Not going to do anything else to it till Sunday when I try to pick him up and then feed after a few hours after I handle him. Sunday will be one week since I bought him.

Darkbloodwyvern - Having a temp gun is amazing. I love my temp gun. Yeah, I've been meaning to get a steralite tub and a soldering iron. I do have an ultratherm uth as a spare incase anything happens to my flexwatt. Thanks for the tips. As far as touching him since I got him. I'll be honest - when I put him in his cage I haven't touched him since. I've been wanting to touch him so damn badly. He's been in his Exo Terra 2 in 1 hide. The hide that comes apart from the top. I bought 2 log hides to replace the other 2 smaller hides. So, maybe he'll like those as well.