Couple of Q's

[Jay_Bunny]

My fiance's king snake is housed in a 10g tank. He is still small and should be fine in that tank until we move and are able to build a rack. He's on newspaper, has two hides, and a water dish.

My first question. My fiance has a heat lamp on the tank, but now that spring is here, temps are going up for all our reptiles. The tank normally stays above 80, never dropping below 75. With the heat lamp, the temps sometimes get too hot. Would it be ok to leave the lamp off and just let the snake live in the room temp. This does not create much of a temp gradient though, but we can't exactly cool down the tank as they don't run the AC.

Second question. We are feeding him mouse pinkies. So far he's taken 2 live since we got him on the 25th of March. He did a really wierd thing yesterday when we went to feed him. He began to inch foreward, like a worm. Instead of slithering with his body all going in the same pattern (you notice that when snakes move, their body follows itself. If there is a bend, the entire body follows that bend until he tail.), he bunched up his body and then moved foreward. I have never seen Zim do this, so it worried me that Spencer was doing it. Other than blue eyes, I can't really judge when a snake is about to shed, so I'm not sure if shedding could be a factor in this. His eyes were not blue.

[Shelby]

1: Personally, I'd go to the hardware store and buy a lamp dimmer switch. Really easy to solder onto the wire to the heatlamp.. and you can dim the bulb a bit to create just the right temperature. Dimmer switches are about $5.. a soldering gun is about $8 if you don't have one already. It's really good for a snake to have a temperature gradient.

2: Well, doesn't sound unusual to me.. sometimes snakes move oddly when in stalking mode.

[Jay_Bunny]

Well is the room temp of 82 ok for the cool side? If we put any type of heat element on top, the temp goes up to 88 and above.

And as for the weird movement, I don't think he was stalking, as he was moving away from the pinky.

[Shelby]

82 is alright for the cool side.. a bit on the warmer side, but he'll be ok.

Often young kingsnakes can be afraid of their food - hence moving away from the pinky (silly snakes) I really wouldn't worry about him, though I can't see what he's doing. Unless he's flipping around, I wouldn't worry about how he moves.