After many hours on the forums, finally got my first BP!

I've spent the last few weeks planning, researching, and shopping around for my first BP. Yesterday was my (21st) birthday and I decided it was time to give myself a bday present! I had planned on just gathering materials and getting a cage setup, but when I got to petco I took a look at the animals and was surprised to find a very healthy and friendly snake, couldn't pass it up! I was actually ready to talk myself out of it when my girlfriend convinced me to go ahead and get him!

I have his cage all set up, and after some tweaking with the rheostat I have the cage at a perfect 92/83 degree gradient! The humidity is on the high side at 70%, however I live in Alabama and it has been raining every day the last few weeks so there's not too much I can do about that. If it gets any higher I'll take his water bowl out and try to bring the humidity down a bit, but I'm not sure when his last shed was so 70% could end up working out well!

I know you aren't generally supposed to handle them much the first day or two so they can settle in, but this snake has been amazingly friendly and adventurous! At the store he was in a ball in my hand for all of 10 seconds, quickly stretching out and crawling all around my hand. That was one of the main reasons I took him home, he didn't seem scared at all and I could tell he was healthy and strong by how well he was moving around my hand. He has a very strong grip!

While tweaking the temperatures I held him for quite some time. He never balled up, wound up for a strike, or hissed at all! I probably won't handle him too much tomorrow to ensure he doesn't stress out, but he's been crawling around both my hands and his cage since I brought him home so I think he's adjusted just fine!

Here are some pics, I've named him Jake the Snake. Those of you who watched wrestling back in the early 90s will remember that reference ;) Disregard the mess behind his cage, I shoved everything back when setting up his cage and haven't cleaned up yet


http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

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http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

Picture taken before tweaking the rehostat and getting a 92/83 temperature gradient
http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

No hides?

Congrats and good looking snake.But you are going to need hides for your BP.One for the hot spot and one for the cool side.You will prob need to take out the wood logs to make room.If your BP can't hide he will stress big time and prob go off feed.You want them the size your BP can fit into and touch all parts of the hide.Small plastic flower pots do well if needed you can cut them so they won't be to high.
Mike.

The angle on the logs is bad, he can actually curl up and be completely hidden underneath the logs. Tomorrow I will be getting another hide for the other side, rearranging a little bit to make room for it. So far he's been very comfortable moving all around the cage checking it out, hopefully with the second hide on the cool side by the water bowl he'll feel totally at home!

Congratulations! One thing to keep in mind, is that a happy ball python is one that ISN'T cruising their enclosure all the time. Constant roaming is a sign of stress, especially if they won't settle in for most of your daylight hours, so keep an eye on that.

If they're training for the snake Olympics, they're probably stressed.

I'd still recommend keeping handling to a very minimum (ie, not at all) for the first week, while you allow him to get used to his new home.

Congrats!

grats on the bp:)....i second the handling and hide comments:)...Welcome to the addiction!

Grats! Keep us updated.

Nice healthy good looking bp! Congrats!!!

:welcome: Congrats on the snake, as stated before welcome to the addiction. :gj: As for the humidity issue, I would suggest a much smaller bowl. Also if that does not help enough get a small desk type fan pointed in the direction of the cage. This will help lower the humidity greatly. I have my snakes in the basement and it has been raining quite a bit around here lately. So the other day when I checked on the girls the humidity in their tubs was about 86 so I set up a big box fan blowing on their rack and the humidity dropped to 55 in about 30 minutes. :gj:

Congrats on the new snake it looks good.

Hello. And welcome. What is the thing you have him in? I like it. Almost like a cross between a tub, and an aquarium. Where did you get it? He's a beautiful snake by the way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stratus_020202

Hello. And welcome. What is the thing you have him in? I like it. Almost like a cross between a tub, and an aquarium. Where did you get it? He's a beautiful snake by the way.

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I'm not the OP, but it's an Exo Terra Faunarium or Kritter Keeper. You can get them at Petsmart or Petco - I've housed mice in one that has punch out's for the water bottle.

Congrats on you new bp!

Oh. I was thinking it was bigger than those. I realize it's just a little bp.

It is indeed the kritter keeper that rabernet mentioned. I don't remember the exact dimension, believe it was around 17.75 x 12 x 6.5 inches, just slightly bigger than the tubs most people on here recommend for baby ball pythons. I will be building a viv this fall when I'm back at college that will be much bigger and something he'll be able to grow into and use for years (full of many hides for a small snake).

I've changed my setup a little bit today based on everyone's recommendations. I now have the logs on the cool side of the tank with a small hide over the heater, a saucer from a small planter. I also got a heat lamp to keep on during the day as I was finding it hard to keep the ambient temp at 85 degrees. I have found the sweet spot in my rheostat to keep the hot spot at 95 but the cool side was more like 80. I now have a 60 watt heat bulb in an overhead desk lamp to help bring the temp up a little more.

I think he was just checking out the new tank and searching for an escape route when I saw him wandering all over the tank. After half an hour or so he settled in and was laying on/under the logs. So far today he's been comfortably curled up underneath the logs sleeping all day, so I'll take that as a good sign! He ate on Sunday I believe so I'll be trying his first feed on Sunday or Monday of this week. He was eating frozen/thawed at the pet store, hopefully he'll take them for me too!


I'll try to get a few pics up tonight of my modified tank setup tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for all the help!

Congrats!! thats a cute looking normal...i suggest you dont take the water bowl out they still need water and if not its going to get dehydrated...if you have a heat lamp turn it on and it should bring the humidity down...

Congrats on the new arrival. :gj:

As promised, here are a few update pictures of the enclosure. I tried to consider as much of the advice on here as possible. I have moved the logs to the cool side with a large covered space underneath for him to hide in. I added a den on the warm side made from the saucer of a 6" pot. Like I said in my last post I added a heat lamp to bring the cool side ambient temp up, now hovering between 83 and 85 degrees. The lamp is on a timer set to go on at 7:00AM and off at 7:00PM.

I don't know if you can see it very well in the picture but I also bought a little 4" high speed fan from Walmart. I put this behind the tank and have it blowing towards the back of the tank to bring down the humidity. There's only so much I can do about humidity being in a humid summer in Alabama, but I between the fan and lamp the humidity now sits around 55% rather than 70%.

He seems to be very happy, spending most of his time under the planter I added. I have the thermometer on the cool side measuring cool side ambient temp and humidity and the probe on the warm side. The probe is under the substrate directly above the UTH. At the moment I'm getting a 95/83 degree gradient with 58% humidity. Jake's hiding under the potter with his nose poking out of the opening.


Think I finally got the setup just right!


http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

It looks like the logs are just sitting flat on the ground in this picture. The outside log is tall and thin, standing on end with the other log propped up on it making a perfect little cave underneath it for Jake to hide in
http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9...D550/ry%3D400/

I like the desk lamp idea. Does it still hold humidity well with it on?

I was actually having a problem with the humidity being too high so the lamp helped bring it down to the 50-60% range. I'm using a 60 watt reptile bulb which brings the ambient temp up by 3-5 degrees and humidity down by 7-10%. This is exactly what I was looking for so its working great for my setup :)

Well now that you've added a hide that's a very nice little setup you have for him :) I would recommend another planter for the other side as well (and just keep the branches for something for him to climb on), but if you've seen him thermo-regulating underneath the branches and he seems content then I guess it's okay

The only thing I have to add is that unless that's an infra-red heat bulb that you're using, make sure you're turning it off at night (or switching to a moonlight bulb) so he has a normal day/night cycle. You're probably already doing that but I just wanted to be sure :P

Edit: sorry I did a speed read before...now I see that you said the lamp is on a timer. Awesome :gj:

Oh, and congrats on the handsome little guy!! :D