For personal knowledge, and future application. After my fiancee gets home from Afghanistan in about six weeks, we'll start perusing for apartments / duplexes around December or so and I'll have a snake room. He wants to get into the BPs with me and we want to start getting our girls to grow up while we're in school, and a few boys. With that in mind, I have some questions for us and some miscellaneous morph questions:

1.) Are black pastel and cinnamon the same gene on different lines, like lesser and butter? They don't really look it, but their derived morphs look similar.

2.) Why does super cinnamon and super black pastel cause deformities? What is the ratio of this? Are there any other black snakes? Does a "duck bill" affect quality of life? I've never actually seen one.

3.) I don't understand "het red axanthic". It's a visual, why is it called het? Is there no super form, or is it lethal and that's why we see no "red axanthics"?

4.) How do you have a 66% poss het? 100% het x 100% het = 50% poss het for non visual babies right? Where does the percentage 66 come from? Or is that backwards?

5.) Is it dangerous to keep different snake species in the same room? I saw somewhere on the QT procedure thread that someone doesn't keep their boa in the same room as their pythons.

6.) Our projected end snake amount is 2.7 snakes. Males are butter ghost and bumlbebee, females are: mojave het ghost, pastave, 2 normals, bumblebee het ghost, pastel ghost, and yellowbelly. Is this okay? Do you think we should have another male, can they handle 3-4 females each? Something missing in our gene pool that you would add? We would love to get a leopard male, and may do that depending on our funds... I think we probably will though.

7.) How do you know a snake is ready to breed... I've heard of some people doing cool spells or putting males together to stimulate hormones, and some don't... Do you just go by weight? Snakes don't have a "heat", do they? Just after a female is bred, THEN she starts her process of ovulation and whatnot?

8.) We're building our own racks... I found a great guide on YouTube for inexpensive racks that use melamine, which I know is heavy, but we won't be moving them much. The goal initially is to build a 9 tub 41qt rack, and then a smaller rack that holds a number of 28qt and a number of shoebox tubs. Do you have a better suggestion?

9.) I'm learning as much as I can about breeding rats from the forum. Any tips and tricks or something not often mentioned that I should be sure to look into? Is there a certain source I should get rats from? Also, great references for building rat racks?

By the way, we're not getting everything at once. Don't worry we're taking it slow and learning But I like to know everything in advance. We have a great opportunity to start off with some great morphs and combos to start, and I want to make sure we do everything right and we're making the right calls. By the way, I was looking for used mini fridges with clear doors for future converting into an incubator (we can at least have one pairing this year / early next year with my bee and adult normal), and I'm having awful luck. I have found old winecoolers though. Same difference?