Day/night cycle?

[Ditto]

Hi! I've been researching this a bit lately but everything I've found so far is from 3+ years ago so I figured I'd see if I could get some more recent opinions. Sooo, in your opinion, do you think BPs can benefit from day/night cycles? And if so, do you think they're necessary?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

As far as tempertures go, no you will have no benefit only issue, keep your temp steady 24/7 year round, now if you breed that's another story.

Light wise if the light come through the room that's all you need.

[Ditto]

As far as tempertures go, no you will have no benefit only issue, keep your temp steady 24/7 year round, now if you breed that's another story.

Light wise if the light come through the room that's all you need.

What if there's no natural light in the room? Like near complete darkness. Or even different levels of light throughout the day?
And just for the record, this is all hypothetical, I'm not keeping my BP in complete darkness, just curious

[alittleFREE]

I think a day/night light cycle is important. Constant light would probably stress a snake out. Not sure what the effects of constant, total darkness would be.... but I would imagine they benefit from knowing when is night and when is day, etc.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

What if there's no natural light in the room? Like near complete darkness. Or even different levels of light throughout the day?
And just for the record, this is all hypothetical, I'm not keeping my BP in complete darkness, just curious

If there wasn't I would do something similar to daylight longer amount of light in the summer shorter in the winter.

[Starscream]

If there wasn't I would do something similar to daylight longer amount of light in the summer shorter in the winter.

I'm not sure if that would be accurate for ball pythons, though? Where they're from, their photoperiod doesn't really change much. What does change is the seasons -- the dry and wet seasons, specifically. Here's a site that has the sunlight hours for Accra, Ghana throughout the year: http://www.accra.climatemps.com/sunlight.php . Of course, that's only one area of their natural range, but as you can see it only fluctuates by about 30 minutes.

I personally do provide night temperature drops. It's certainly not necessary in captivity, but since I have the ability to do so with my Herpstat2, I figured I would experiment with it and see how my snake responds.

My lights turn off at 7PM, and then at 7:30PM the temperatures drop over a course of 30 minutes (I could probably extend that time but I don't know if it would make a difference) to be about 80F on the hot side and 78F on the cold. There's a rock under the heat panel that holds heat for a few hours after the heat goes down, so she still has access to heat at night for a period of time. Maze typically comes out to explore sometime after 8:30PM, and keeps going until after I've gone to bed, except after a feed or while in shed.

Lights turn back on at 7AM, and the heat ramps back up to 86F on the hot side by 8AM. I'm usually asleep when the lights turn back on, so I honestly couldn't tell you if she's active during that time on the regular. A few months back I did wake up a few hours early and she was still scooting around until closer to 9AM. That was an isolated incident, and I don't have cameras hooked up to prove if that's a regular thing for her, though.

Again, not necessary, this is just what I do.

[redshepherd]

To the OP: I wouldn't recommend what Starscream is doing with temp drops, unless you are literally breeding a female, because that's how you encourage your ball python to go off feed, especially in the fall or winter. Not all balls do, since some are total pigs haha. But it'll increase the chances that a bp will respond by fasting, especially if they are a sub-adult~adult individual.

Not everything should be emulated like "in the wild". If that were the case, we should add some predators and cold winter temps to their enclosure too (of course don't do that). It's better to stick to what people have found to keep the species consistently healthy in captivity.

In terms of providing day/night light cycle though, it's no harm done! Even if you don't specifically provide direct lighting, I believe they should still have a day/night cycle from ambient light in the room.

[Starscream]

As stated, my post above is what I do, and not necessarily recommended for beginners. I do think equating lowering night temperatures by a few degrees with adding a predator to the enclosure is a slippery slope fallacy and a staw man. I would NEVER endorse adding something to an enclosure that would endanger your animal.

Anywho, have fun researching and don't be afraid to hit me up with a PM if you need anything!

[redshepherd]

As stated, my post above is what I do, and not necessarily recommended for beginners. I do think equating lowering night temperatures by a few degrees with adding a predator to the enclosure is a slippery slope fallacy and a staw man. I would NEVER endorse adding something to an enclosure that would endanger your animal.

Anywho, have fun researching and don't be afraid to hit me up with a PM if you need anything!

Obviously adding a predator is a joke lol, I'm surprised someone might take that literally. My point is that not everything emulated "like the wild" is necessarily beneficial to the snake. And starscream, you are a beginner too...

[MissterDog]

I'm not sure if that would be accurate for ball pythons, though? Where they're from, their photoperiod doesn't really change much. What does change is the seasons -- the dry and wet seasons, specifically. Here's a site that has the sunlight hours for Accra, Ghana throughout the year: http://www.accra.climatemps.com/sunlight.php . Of course, that's only one area of their natural range, but as you can see it only fluctuates by about 30 minutes.

I personally do provide night temperature drops. It's certainly not necessary in captivity, but since I have the ability to do so with my Herpstat2, I figured I would experiment with it and see how my snake responds.

My lights turn off at 7PM, and then at 7:30PM the temperatures drop over a course of 30 minutes (I could probably extend that time but I don't know if it would make a difference) to be about 80F on the hot side and 78F on the cold. There's a rock under the heat panel that holds heat for a few hours after the heat goes down, so she still has access to heat at night for a period of time. Maze typically comes out to explore sometime after 8:30PM, and keeps going until after I've gone to bed, except after a feed or while in shed.

Lights turn back on at 7AM, and the heat ramps back up to 86F on the hot side by 8AM. I'm usually asleep when the lights turn back on, so I honestly couldn't tell you if she's active during that time on the regular. A few months back I did wake up a few hours early and she was still scooting around until closer to 9AM. That was an isolated incident, and I don't have cameras hooked up to prove if that's a regular thing for her, though.

Again, not necessary, this is just what I do.

Just curious. I'm reminded of this thread
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...he-recommended

where you were originally unsure of night temp drops and decided against it after getting various opinions against the practice. You even thought it was counter-intuitive at the time so I'm wondering what made you decide to give it a go?