Hi everyone

So I joined up last night and read through the stickies and about 15 pages of threads. I was very surprised about what I read.

I'm brand new to BPs (and reptiles in general). I had planned on getting a snake myself, but I was surprised with a one month old BP this Christmas, courtesy of my brother. We were out of town, so he just presented me with The Guide to Owning a Ball Python by John Coborn in a box while the snake was waiting for me back at his condo.

Before I flew home & picked him up, I read the book cover to cover twice. Then I got on the web & did more research. Some of the info on this forum is very different from the book.

Initially, I was going to (politely) post about being torn between the two advices, but then I thought to do an actual search on the book (duh). So I did.

After seeing what you and others have said about the book... heh... well, I'm a bit more inclined to up my warm side temps from the 79-88, to the ~90 along with the corresponding cold side temps. But I'm not totally convinced due to some of the behavior my snake is showing. Let me restate that I'm completely new to this.

I've got a 20gal long terrarium. The substrate is cypress. I have water dish that I refill every day. I've got two hides, one on the cold and one on the warm (soon these hides will be exactly the same after what I've read on this thread). I've got a heading pad on the warm side along with a 100w day bulb & a 75w blue night one in 12 hour shifts (also on the right side). My temps are 80-85 during the day, and 73-78 through the night. My thermometer is in the center of the tank, about 4 inches up from the bottom of the tank. This will soon be changed, I've already picked up two digitals - one for each side (which I'll probably dump for two accu-rites tomorrow anyway =)

My snake spends the entire day in the cold hide. I have a feeling this is due to two things - the snake's natural instinct, and the light being to friggin' bright. But at night... he still spends a lot of time in the cold hide (in 73-78ish temps). This is away from the lamp and the heating pad, and there isn't anything in the room scaring him to that side. Yeah, he'll come up and bask on top of the warm hide, but he doesn't say up there all the time (implying to me that he isn't really cold).

He already fed on a thawed pinky the one time I tried, no problem there. This was about 2 hours after I ended the day cycle.

What do you think about this?

Also, why the elimination of the day-night cycle? Is it because most of you don't use heating lights like I'm currently using (as opposed to ceramic heat emitters)? The light controlled day thing doesn't matter with sufficient natural light? Also, one of the terrarium stickies I read about containing heat with tin foil seemed to leave no room at all for effective ventilation.

Another question that I didn't see on the forum... I know that this is probably a very VERY obvious one, but I'm assuming it's bad to bug the snake in the hide, right? Like lifting it up when he's in it (in the event that it's a small box)?

My next step this weekend is to dump the substrate in the trash & replace with eco-earth, put my new hides and thermometers in, and give the tank a spray down with the Provent-a-mite that just got here in the mail today. I haven't spotted mites, but why not right? I'll also pick up a ceramic heat emitter; I'm almost convinced my day lamp is too bright.

I need to get shim sexed too. "Viktor" if male, "Vik" if female. =)

Anyway, thanks a lot for reading all of this. Let me know what you think.