Is my general care and maintenance stressing out my ball python?

[reknirt]

I'm a new snake owner with a 3 month old ball python and this board has made me really paranoid. According to basically all the posts every ball python in existence is either sick, refusing to eat, covered in mites, has stuck shed, etc.

Anyway, I just hope I'm doing everything right. That being said, I'm curious if my general care and maintenance of my snake is stressing him out. He's not displaying any symptoms,:cens0r: and he seems great, just in general I'm curious.

For instance, I've only "handled" him once in the two weeks I've had him because people say not to handle them until they're eating consistently. I've fed mine once since I've had him, successfully, and will feed again tomorrow. But I do go in his tank daily to check temps with my temp gun, change water, or lift his hide to check for dumps/urates since he likes to do that in there. I also lift his hide while he's in it to remoisten his spaghnum moss since I have him in a glass tank. He definitely doesn't like when I lift his hide up.

Anyway, I'm curious how much stress this general care and maintenance causes? I assume it's worth the risk since he gets to live in a clean, warm, humid home. But everytime I do lift his hide for a legitimate reason I feel like I'm forever harming him. With all the stories on here its not hard to start viewing these great animals as immensely fragile.

He's out exploring now. And I was so excited when I got him to watch him explore his tank, now I'm just paranoid that he's desperately trying to escape because he's super stressed.

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/N1ELmRd.jpg)[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/uZ7PmA2.jpg)