Sudden ball python death?

I just had a very promising snake randomly die. There were no sings of anything or any problems. He did not have a meal in him or anything, he was going into shed. Tonight I went in to check on him and he was dead.

Im sorry for your loss but i would take him to the vet and see if they can figure out what happened. Bc if they find out you could be saving your other animals or just for the sake of knowing. Was all the husbandry and everything alright?

We would need more info to speculate what happened.
Have you been feeding live or frozen? What were the temps? Is there any way that the temps could have spiked or heat been turned off? Was he sufficiently hydrated? how long had you had him?

I have had him for about 7 months proper maintenance no spikes in the heat tape. (Just took the temps.) He has been eating F/T rats. I just have no idea what could have happened.

Double post./

Okay, So I put the body in the fridge and got him to the vet for a necropsy. After 6 hours the initial results came back. The male fire had:

-An anatomical heart defect.
-His heart was approximately 2 to 3 times the size it should have been.
-The Atrium chamber of the heart was the majority of the extra growth.

Has anyone else had a snake pass for a reason like this? I miss the fire male dearly.

I'm very sorry for your loss, but there is nothing you could have done to prevent that. :(

I have not personally experienced this, but I'm sure that others who work with numbers sadly see unexpected deaths. I'm so sorry for your loss! :(

Yeah it was really unfortunate. But I do want to thank my friend David over at DBherp.com He actually brought me over my choice of a new male fire today and helped out with some of my other snakes. He's a top notch guy there's not a lot of breeders willing to replace a snake that was lost due to problems like that!

I am sorry for your loss. Sounds like Dave is a real standup guy and a friend. Hearing that I will consider dealing with him in the future

i am sorry for your loss. i have had this happen before. but it was not a heart difect. i had three of my snakes die just randomly. like you. but we found out it was the water that we were giving them that caused it. its just a freak thing that happens.

I am so sorry for your loss. I know how you feel. I am new to the herp world and I got my first snake / ball python in Feb. of this year, she was freakin' awesome. I was feeding her weekly and caring for her, but she was incredibly mean. And everyone I talked to said that there is a very small percent of ball pythons that are just hideous. She must have been a dud. Well I was in my CNA program going 9 hours a day and dealing with that and one day she looked funny. So I was like well, we will just wait and see, a few days later I took her into the exotics vet and he said the symptoms she was displaying were those related to IBD. I wound up euthanizing her because I didn't want her to suffer. I guess it was a neurological thing. Anyway, the moral of the story is...love your pets everyday because you don't know when they will be gone. That is a really cool thing of your friend David to do.