Just For Fun: What Were Your Newbie Mistakes?

I'm chuckling over in another thread about the newbie mistakes a couple of us made, which has me wondering what other newbie mistakes have been made.

Thank goodness our BPs aren't terribly fragile and survived our first few weeks of cluelessness. (This is week #4 for me, and I may well still be in that clueless mode, although not as bad as during week #1. I was downright paranoid and frazzled at the time!)

So, what were some of the silly mistakes you made during your first week or so of snake ownership that your patient snakey had to endure? (Would especially like to hear from longtime experts who once were newbies.)

One of mine was continuing to feed hopper mice, which the prior owner had been feeding. Am happy to report that Patriot is going from being shaped like an eel to being shaped like a round BP should be.

Next?

Long list:

bought bp from Petco (impulse)
didn't know what I was doing
no vet
bought snake kit from Petco
half log (one)
heat lamp
feed in separate enclosure
tank (haha)
mulchy substrate
dial thermometers
no tstat on UTH (it was on the side, so could never get hot)
no temp zones
climbing branches
Reptile Relief for mites
upgrade to 40g tank

Boy, was I a mess. Some of them I fixed relatively quickly, others took until I really discovered this site during this summer. I'd like to think I really improved in this year and a half since I first got her.

LOL! Here's some:

Put baby corn snake in a 29gal.
Used pine for 2 snakes
Covered a hole on top of the tank with duct tape and corn got stuck
Used a fish tank top for a corn and never seen her again
Never used thermometers
Bought animals from LLLReptile

That's just a few of them. This was all before I found this site.

Ohh I get to post the whole list!

-I though I knew what I was doing, But I didnt!
-Bought sand as bedding.
-Bought a HUGE exo-terra rock water bowl thing. (But I think this actualy helped in the long run).
-UTH with no Tstat.
-Had no idea what a Tstat was.
-Had no Idea about hides.
-Bought a heat lamp.
-The UTH was running at full power. at the same time as the lamp was on. (this is why I said the rock water bowl probably saved her life. She would go in it).

Im probably forgeting some stuff... :tears:

Im glad she is alive and well now :D Wonderful BP!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mrshawt

Long list:

bought bp from Petco (impulse)
didn't know what I was doing
no vet
bought snake kit from Petco
half log (one)
heat lamp
feed in separate enclosure
tank (haha)
mulchy substrate
dial thermometers
no tstat on UTH (it was on the side, so could never get hot)
no temp zones
climbing branches
Reptile Relief for mites
upgrade to 40g tank

Boy, was I a mess. Some of them I fixed relatively quickly, others took until I really discovered this site during this summer. I'd like to think I really improved in this year and a half since I first got her.

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lol thats funny thats my EXACT story too!!! >-<

It's been two years since my first BP, and sadly I had to sell her, but I've learned a ton since then. :)
I didn't make the same mistakes most newbies do, since I had cared for these snakes at the zoo and had done a TON of research, but let's see...

Used carpet for substrate
Picked out a rather undersized little snake
Fed in separate container
Fed hoppers for WAY too long
Used a rheostat for a long time
Used stick on thermometers

:) Tanks are NOT mistakes BTW...but they can be used badly. I didn't know at first about covering the top, or the back and sides.

But the whole point of sites like this is to learn...and keep learning. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Argentra

:) Tanks are NOT mistakes BTW...but they can be used badly. I didn't know at first about covering the top, or the back and sides.

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I kid, I kid! :P

Oh man, here's my list:
-not knowing where the probe for the DT goes
-didn't know BPs need a lot of humidity
-didn't know I needed two hides instead of one for all of my snakes
-didn't know anything about dimmers, rheostats, or thermostats
-barely knew anything when I purchased my Dumeril's boa (though, when I got home I researched the heck out of Google lol)
-when I got my first Corn snake when I was 10 I had no idea how to care for it rather than giving it a heat lamp, a hide, a water dish, and Aspen Bedding.

The list goes on. But ever since I joined this site it REALLY helped me learn important things about some of my snakes I didn't even know, and I would love to thank you all who kindly helped me with my problems :']

And btw, I bought my first BP at Petsmart, and she's actually doing great right now. She's my favorite out of all snakes I have and would ever own. I love her to death, only if she could be a cuddly animal.. though, I did pass out on the couch with her for 2 hours one time xD

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PythonBreeder

LOL! Here's some:

Bought animals from LLLReptile

That's just a few of them. This was all before I found this site.

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I made that mistake recently. She only had mites but it still was a bad choice. I figured because they had a big name that they would want to keep it clean.:rofl:

Incubating eggs...

Didn't think that it was possible for the incubator to get TOO hot.

Lost a whole clutch of Pastels back when Pastels were $$$$. (Yes, that is FOUR digits... Do you remember when??)

Oh, and sexing... I sold a Female as a Male back when females were highly sought after. And I was looking for them...

I went to petsmart and picked up 300 worth of stuff and next month i was looking for a rack and more snakes... I bsically did no research and wasted allot of money for nothin...

basically what everyone has said i have done as a noob, well im still a noob but a more educated one:)

Having my wife present the first time i handled nibbles our spider ball, took her out of the bag, held her, put her on the floor lol, and got tagged lol, looked up for my wife and heard her jumping on the bed 4 floors up lol...never seen her move so fast:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ladyohh

incubating eggs...

Didn't think that it was possible for the incubator to get too hot.

Lost a whole clutch of pastels back when pastels were $$$$. (yes, that is four digits... Do you remember when??)

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2004

Newbee mistakes..

1: I bought into the whole after a year they only need fed once every 14 days :(
2: started feeding bigger than normal prey.. (caused fasts)

Oh God,

I think I made all of them and even invented a few. :oops:

NO thermometers
No humidity readings either
NO control on the UTH (thankfully it was an ultratherm by sheer luck )
GRAVEL for the substrate (horrible horible choice - scuffed BP balanced on rocks above a layer of drying urine ) Even I knew it had to go after 2 weeks.
Not enough hides - and of the wrong sort.
Too small food items.
Bought a hatchling with ticks that had never eaten.
As you can tell I had done ZERO research and just relied on the guy in the pet shop. He actually wasn't that bad but I was/ am a stubborn cuss and didn't listen correctly.

Once I got a book and started listening I improved Cleos tank but then made even more mistakes when I got more.

I housed 3 females in a 5 by 2 by 2 foot wooden viv with sliding glass doors and ceramic heaters in the ceiling - with a thermostat at least this time.

I knew to keep the male seperate but then put them together while I cleaned and rebuilt his cage - so had an unplanned breeding (which later resulted in a clutch of eggs from a way undesized female who then retained 3 of them ).

It was at this point I joined this site and started reading - though I still argued about it for a bit like everyone else. :rolleyes:

Quite apart from what it has done for me this site has totally transformed my snakes lives for the better. :bow:

Now if I can just remember to keep learning. :oops:


dr del

Baby corn snake in a 40G critter cage.

Bought bp from petco
Bought the supplies at the same time
Didn't get everything I needed
Fed him too small of mice
Still don't have a scale
Got bit, so must have done something wrong

Thats probably not everything xD

Thought of one more, and this is probably one of the worst things anyone can do, and is a reinforcement that you should always, always buy everything you need before buying the animal.

Used a human heating pad for two weeks before getting a real one(reason being I had to order a thermostat online and it took forever to arrive)

Unrest, I've got a site for you to go to, this is the cheaperst you'll get a good scale.
This is the same scale as they have ar RBI, but its much cheaper here. You won't find a better price.
http://www.saveonscales.com/product_mw_7001dx.html

This makes me feel left out, and rather sheepish. We went to a local pet store that is a reptile only store, saw Dax, fell in love, put a down payment on him, and came home and found this site and spent the next two weeks on here and the internet in general reading everything we could find that even mentioned BP's. We went back twice before we brought him home so we could feed him ourselves and learn how it was done. We haven't made any changes in how we keep him except he now has a bigger home, bigger water dish and bigger hides than he started with.
We aren't sorry now but had we been more informed we wouldn't have gotten him from them, he was a captive hatch. I'm sure we weren't doing the best job of feeding him the right food at the right time when we started either.

My favorite newbie mistake - buying one bp and thinking I would STOP! :D

Good thing I have never bought an animal from petco/petsmart. My first snake was my anaconda, which I did some researching before purchasing, so thats not a mistake because she will always be my first snake and she's sweeter then ever.

My first mistake would be listening to the petco/petsmart idiots on how to setup a tank. Even though I did still question and I later talked to a different guy and had all the kinks worked out.

Luckey for me I did all my research before I bought my first snake (Blizzard Corn) For almost a year I wanted a snake I knew everything about them but the problem was I was a girley man to feed the snake rats/mice. I went to 2 expo's before I bought my Corn and said when I went to my third "Daniel don't be a girley man buy a snake" So I did and now no rat/mice scares me!

Daniel

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simpson Balls

Luckey for me I did all my research before I bought my first snake (Blizzard Corn) For almost a year I wanted a snake I knew everything about them but the problem was I was a girley man to feed the snake rats/mice. I went to 2 expo's before I bought my Corn and said when I went to my third "Daniel don't be a girley man buy a snake" So I did and now no rat/mice scares me!

Daniel

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You just reminded me....

I've been messing with snakes for years, catching them and relocating them, mostly copperheads/cotton mouths that like to stay very near my house because of my pond in my front yard, so I would catch them and relocate them. Been doing that since I was about 9, though over the years it's slowed down a bit till I really don't see anything venomous anymore around the house. I of course made stupid mistakes(catching them barehand) but hey I was a kid ya know? Though I have caught ribbon & garters over the years just to snap a few pictures.

My first ever pet snake, was in late October, when I got my anaconda, but i'll tell the story to it. I usually watch tv at work, I watch a lot of discovery & animal planet, and they had a show that aired about them searching for anacondas. Well that was like October 1, or 2nd. So what I did is I said, my first snake will be an anaconda because I know they aren't as bad as people make them seem and I think it would be great to work with one. That's when I discovered Yellow Anacondas(from the show). Did a bit of research then ordered mine from Matt Crews(victoryreptiles).

yaaay

my list:
1) wuts a thermostat? (how does it work?)
2) bought a 40g tank
3) bought a heat lamp
4) used heat pad w/o t-stat
5) fed hoppers instead of adult mice
6) bought from petco (even tho i love her to death =D)
7) 1 bad shed
8) no vet
9) 1 half log hide ONLY
10) bought a mean snake (my sisters albino) T.T....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by h00blah

yaaay

my list:
1) wuts a thermostat? (how does it work?)
2) bought a 40g tank
3) bought a heat lamp
4) used heat pad w/o t-stat
5) fed hoppers instead of adult mice
6) bought from petco (even tho i love her to death =D)
7) 1 bad shed
8) no vet
9) 1 half log hide ONLY
10) bought a mean snake (my sisters albino) T.T....

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Freak, mine would be feeding hoppers instead of adult mice also, I think that may be the one reason my anaconda isn't a little bigger then what she is now. Though I have picked up her feeding a bit more in hopes she regains that size, I really want her to be 6ft+ soon.

Haha, I'm seeing so many that I did!

- Bought a snake from a reptile shop that I cringe about having even been in now (so lucky she had no mites!)
- Baby BP. 55 gallon tank. LOL.
- Half log hides.
- I thought the bedding needed to be deep enough for her to burrow into...so I made sure I put no less than 3 inches of bedding all over the 55 gallon tank.
- HUUUUGE WATER BOWL. It's actually about the perfect size for her now that she's 2400g....
- I fed her the day I got her.
- Held her the day after feeding and getting her home...
- No T-stat
- Dial thermometers and hygrometers
- Climbing sticks
- Quarantine? What's that?


I think that's it, haha. I was pretty obsessive about cleaning the cage, and water bowl, and about humidity. I did only feed every 14 days, because I was told that feeding more often would make her aggressive and fat--luckily, I did research, and fixed that within a few months.

Darn, almost forgot this thread....

Hey, thanks for all the chuckles. I'm so new, not only am I still making these mistakes, I don't even realize it until looking back! Thankfully, our li'l BP is not only surviving but actually growing too! :D

I pulled a noob of a mistake just afew hours ago. I soaked the frozen mouse in warm water like always, while it was still in the bag. It was in their for roughly 20min, like usually, however I did not feel the mouse to see just how warm it was. When I presented the mouse to my bp he definetly had its scent, but unfortunetly only saw one heat signiture, me. I didnt get nailed but he was fallowing me all over the tank and even tried to come out after me lol. No worries, I heated his meal with a hair dryer and he devoured it.:gj:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simpson Balls

Luckey for me I did all my research before I bought my first snake (Blizzard Corn) For almost a year I wanted a snake I knew everything about them but the problem was I was a girley man to feed the snake rats/mice. I went to 2 expo's before I bought my Corn and said when I went to my third "Daniel don't be a girley man buy a snake" So I did and now no rat/mice scares me!

Daniel

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:8: that was funny.:P

I bought my BP a hamster wheel.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jerhart

I bought my BP a hamster wheel.

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Why, pray tell???? :weirdface

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Patricia

Why, pray tell???? :weirdface

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eh...I made that up.

Just wanted to say something that hasn't been mentioned yet. :)

Actually, I really didn't have any newbie mistakes with BP's. Growing up I had lizards...Geckos, Chameleons, Water Dragons. However I was never allowed snakes. Both of my parents were terrified. I spent years studying articles in Reptiles Magazine. I bought all of Philippe de Vosjoli's books back in the day. All trying to convince my parents I was ready and responsible enough to have a snake.

Well, that never worked and I began my collection soon as I was out of the house. So I guess I spent literally years researching and reading on the husbandry requirements of boids and colubrids. By the time I FINALLY got my first BP...I was not going to screw anything up. :)

hmm... The only "real" mistake I made was to run the UTH with out control on it for about a week. No harm done though. Also used stick on thermometer and hydrometer. Now everythings good. :gj:

Hey guys, just wondering why so many of you put "feeding in separate enclosure" a mistake? Is this wrong to do?

Driving myself panic-crazy because I thought all the tubs in my 3-tier rack had to have EXACTLY the same temps and humidity. Fiddling with the thermostats, rearranging the flexwatt, switching out digital thermometers, cranking up the oil-filled heater, changing the digital batteries just in case...

I'll never get those sleepless nights back!

This is a great post . . . thanks to the OP!

I've seen so many mistakes that I made when I started. Some more . . .

- messing with my breeder rats then handling the snakes (BTW, I still forget and do this)
- using 6 qt egg boxes from the year before without checking how well they still hold the humidity
- not doing a preventative mite spray on all new snakes the minute they go into guarantine
- mistakes sexing hatchlings
- trying to build a snake rack (my building skills are pitiful)
- taking too long before I bought a rack for my snakes and another for my rat colonies
- fear of cutting eggs (I still do it sparingly)

gee I could write a book ( not that anyone would read it ),on the stuff I did in the early years. I stated out in the early 90's. I had a the heat rock, the peg board for cage sides, kept it in too low of a temp and fed the rat snake via wild mice I caught with a trap I got off a buddy that worked for a pest company. yet she still alive today . an that just my wild caught and injuryed black rat snake . with the other I kept differnet species together in a cedar wood cage I built from scrap lumber. I kept both snake sexed together ( first 2 ball pythons).
Then I got silm ( all my snakes were rescues at this point. I built a large 5ftx3ftx4 ft cage it had 2 vent holes a heat lamp ( cremic) and a under the cabinet flor light on a timer ( so I could sleep).

Then I found the internet ( above a dial up) all my info before hand came from the 10 buck petshop reptile books and what I seen in the stores.

The only thing can say I done wrong in the last 4 years was rescue of a snake loaded with mites and transfer them though out the trialer ( they as bad as fleas) cause they clung to the cloths as Iwent into the reptile room.

- Put them in a window
- Bought 2 housed them both in a 29 tall tank
- Used turf as the bedding
- Heat lights on 24/7
- Half log hides.
- Held them day after feeding and getting her home...
- No T-stat
- Dial thermometers and hygrometers
- Climbing sticks
- Quarantine? What's that?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by muddoc

2004

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Also 2005

1. Received snake as a gift
2. Also received a 'snake kit'
3. Both were purchased from a kid at Petco
4. Frantically researching online because I had no idea what I was in for and getting too much information and then spending $150 on crap I didn't really need
5. Ran heat lamps only for the first 2 months because I couldn't afford a thermostat
6. Attempted to feed in a separate container because my local herp shop insisted this was the only way. Yea, he didn't even think about eating till I stopped that.
7. Starting out with too small food. Petco had been feeding fuzzy mice. I started with multiple hoppers for a month or so, and then moved up to large adult mice.
8. Using the reptibark that came with my snake kit. I know some people like it, but I HATED it and switched it out within like 4 days.


Thankfully, Simon's no worse for the wear and is a happy, fat snake now.

FINDING OUT THE HARD WAY SNAKES HAVE BELLYBUTTONS

D:

And thinking a heat lamp is a necessary tool.