Well, first of all I would like to thank the moderator RPlank for inviting me to come over and see what this forum is all about.I must say that I am really stunned at the amount of information on Ball Pythons on this site :shock: This is without a doubt the best site for Ball Python husbandry that I have seen so far....Thankyou very much for steering me over here RPlank!!!

I am new to the herp field,having spent most of my life working with and dealing with invertebrates - I am very experienced with tarantulas,scorpions and centipedes.I still maintain a small collection of inverts but I have decided to rather narrowly specialize in Ball Python husbandry.I selected the Ball Python as I wanted a genuine Python but as I am living in a small apartment in Los Angeles a Reticulated or Burmese python would be out of the question.The Ball Python in my humble opinion is the perfect snake for a beginning herper like myselfThey have the mystique of a giant snake but are not enormous like a retic or burm.Granted they may be tricky at times to maintain as I am learning but so far I have had practically no problems with my pair of BPs.

Now a little about my setup.I have two pythons at this time.They are a subadult female that is 24 inches long and a subadult male that is 20 inches long.They are named Trinity and Cypher.I am maintaining them in seperate enclosures that strictly temp and humidity controlled.I am currently maintaining them with a temp gradient that is about 88-90 degrees on the warm end of the enclosures and about 78-80 degrees on the cool end.I am currently still feeding live prey but I am in the process of transitioning them to pre-killed frozen rats.Trinity, the big female has transitioned to juvie rats but Cypher the male is still taking large adult mice.So far they have been voracious feeders and have grown rapidly since I purchased them back in March at the IRBA show out here in Pomona Ca.They were little more than hatchlings at the time but have put on serious size.

As for me I am a 36 year old man living in Southern California in Los Angeles - I am a former Marine and I am now working as a Freight Forwarder.In case you were wondering my real name is John.I look forward to making friends with all of you other Ball Python keepers and I would really like any input you might have on my pythons as far as their husbandry goes since I will admit that I am a rank beginner in the herp field.If any of you are interested at all in the invertebrate hobby I would be more than willing to offer advice and information on that hobby as well.In any case I would like to say that I am really knocked out by this forum and I am feeling a lot better about things now....RPlank knows what I am talking about :wink: :wink:

Talk to you all later!!!!!!!!!

EyeLashViper