I am looking for some pointers, and some reassurance. I know all the basics, the temps and humidity and such, but I was just reading a post on another board about a person who suspects they lost their snake due to salmonella from a bad feeder rat and it has sort of got me in a panic. I am hoping someone could give me some tips on the most common preventable illnesses in snakes and the best steps to prevention.

This is something I worry about quite a bit (was having a nightmare just last night that he was attacked by a lizard ) and coming across a new illness that I hadn't ever read about before or even considered has not helped my state of mind at all. Now I am running myself in circles wondering what other potentially fatal things I may not know about. I mean, I don't even know how you would tell a rat was bad. How can you be sure what quality the feeders are in the first place. I mean I have no idea where his food is really even coming from. I buy from a reptile shop because I only have him and can't justify ordering 50 rats from an online vendor.

I am aware that respiratory infections are a fairly common husbandry related issue, as is scale rot, but I am looking for things that someone new to keeping may not have heard or read about. Any advice you can offer would be wonderful and would definitely help me stop worrying that there is a mystery catastrophe lurking around the corner.