Hi everyone! Just wanna say before anyone points it out I know it's more than likely defensive but 'mean' is just the best way to describe my new little guys attitude.

I know my tank specs will probably be wanted. I do have pictures but I have no idea how to post them to here so here they are:

  • -I have him in an exo terra large low. I know about animal plastics and PVC cages but I'm partial to how exo terra looks and I've modified it to help retain heat and humidity. I've layered sheets of foil over both ends of the screen top, leaving about 6 inches open for ventilation and covered both short ends of the glass with black fabric for privacy.
  • -His humidity stays around 55-60% no problem (living in Florida probably helps for once lol). His temps stay at 77-78 on his cool side and stay around 83-84 on his warm side. His basking spot is an UTH under his warm hide that's on a zilla thermostat set to 97.
  • -He has two hides, one on his cool side, one on warm like I said and is on coconut fiber substrate.
  • -He has clutter. I bought fake vines and some leaves along with a large piece of faux driftwood that he seemed to like climbing on the first two nights
  • -The only extra heating element I have is on the warm side. it's a low watt (25) zoo med moonlight bulb just to help keep the warm side warm, we keep our house at 75-76. The lamp sits on the screen top in a hole cut into the foil to let the light/heat down in.
  • -He has a large water dish
  • -His tank is in our game room and isn't super busy and we're not constantly going past the tank. It's just general household sort of busy. Talking to friends over voice chat occasionally or talking to each other when my husband's home from work, laughing, just day to day sort of stuff.


So now about my boy Soba. I realize I may be jumping the gun being so worried so soon but I'd rather get opinions than just sit and wonder if maybe there's something I'm not aware of that I'm doing wrong.
  • - He's about 9 months old and I got him shipped to me from a breeder. His packaging was fine, he didn't have any injuries at all. Just a bit of an attitude which, granted, I'd be grumpy too after that ordeal.
  • - His breeder listed that he'd eaten on the 7th. an F/T adult mouse. He arrived here on the 11th.
  • - the first two nights seemed to be fine. He would settle into his cool hide for the day and start to poke around at night just exploring his tank, warm up on his hot spot for a bit then go back to checking things out. Unfortunately I'd noticed by morning 2 that his cool hide was just a biiit too small for him so I put a larger one on order.
  • -Day three? was.. interesting. I got his new hide and the plan was to just pull a quick swap but Soba apparently had a different idea. Turned out he was half in, half on top of the too-small hide (it was one of those rock shale dens that I half buried. he decided to un bury it) so, I had to pull him out. He took a lot of exception to that. He kept striking at the snake hook, striking at me. It honestly only took under a minute to pull him out, set him in a box real quick, swap the hides, then put him back in but I want to say for the next half hour at most he was right where I put him back in, cocked up and striking at me through the glass. Honestly acting like he wanted a piece of me.
  • Since then it's been back to the usual, leaving him alone outside of going in to change his water. He's been hunkered in his new hide for three days now and I'm not certain he's even come out at night when we're asleep.
  • I offered him a F/T rat pup (adult mice were out of stock) last night as it's been about 10 days since his last meal. He wasn't interested in coming out for it so I decided to leave it overnight and still nothing.


I realize it's only been about 6 days since he got here and coming from a big breeder, he probably wasn't messed with much, but I'm just concerned that there's something I'm unknowingly doing that could be stressing him out. Help a nervous girl out?