In October, I'm getting ready for breeding. I've got planned who's being paired to who. One day, I walk into the 'snake room' and decide to pull out my favorite adult female ball. I notice that she is very cold. So I place her on the warm side and proceed to check on my other snakes. They too are cold. I start inspecting and put my hand on the heat panel, ARS rack. I find that it is giving off no heat. My first thought is that it is not plugged in. Sure enough it IS plugged in. Then I look up at the Helix, it is not on. I unplug the Helix to inspect it. I plug it into another outlet and it does not turn on at all. So I call up Helix and tell them what happened. They told me to ship it to them and they'd send me a new one, but I had to pay shipping both ways. No problem.
When I get the new Helix, I plug it into the hatchling rack; while the adult rack is now on a Herpstat. All goes well for about 3-4 months. Until today. I did my morning checkup and noticed it seemed a bit warm in the room. I look at the mini heater and that is fine. I look at the Helix and it reads 107! I decide to grab all the snakes and put them in a different tub. I reach my female pastels tub and there she is, dead. I picked her up and she was super stiff and very warm. This was a real blow to me because she was in my top 5 of favorite snakes and was one of my best eaters and growers. I just don't know what to do at this moment. I'm done with Helix. Tired of their stuff malfunctioning on me.
This is not the first time I have heard of a Helix malfunctioning either. About 2-3 years ago I heard a story where two kids (and wife) father passed away. They were left some $300,000 from his death. For some reason, they decide to invest in ball pythons. They get everything from normals to pinstripes; keep in mind this is when pinstripes were still some $20,000. They have their set up, they excited, can't wait to get started. And then one day, their Helix malfunctioned. It killed every snake they bought. How do I know this isn't just a story? It may be. But I get the same story from 3 different breeders who claim to sold the kids a snake...
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