Desert Tank

[blackcrystal22]

Mr. Shawt, I sent you this PM, anyone else, feel free to respond or contact me on Live Messenger

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Hey, Mr. Shawt... Thanks for the reply on my thread. I've got a few more questions for you if you don't mind. It would probably be easier to ask/answer on an instant messanger if you have one, if you have Live (msn) or Yahoo you can add me by my email: esanchez (at) live (dot) com.

I'll let you do that if you want to but here's me first questions.

We have 4 snakes.

0.1 (2.0" BP)(Zelda)
1.0 (2.2" BP)(Emilio aka Millie)
1.0 (2.5" BP)(Caesar)
0.1 (4.3" BP)(Cleo) <- She's kind of a pain.

Now, we keep them all in the same vivarium (the one you replied on) and they seem to like it. We haven't had ANY feeding problems at all, except with the big girl who was fasting, but she's eating a healthy meal once a week now.

Do you think they need to be separated?

They're all crawling around the tank right now, just looking around. Pretty nice to look at, they have a red infrared night heat lamp.

I thought I saw two snakes in the first picture...
4 snakes in one cage is a very bad idea. Do they need to be separated? Yes.

First of all, females who are too small to breed will and could have already. Which can lead to impaction and death possibly. The bigger female could breed successfully and then you'll have babies on your hands. Are you prepared for 6-10 new babies? Do you know about breeding, follicles, incubation, and the impact it has on the female?
If one of the snakes gets an RI (higher risk with those lamps, btw, because theres such a suck of humidity) then all 4 get an RI. Thats 4 sets of vet bills, and thats not cheap in the slightest.
There are also cases of cannibalism, ESPECIALLY if there are larger animals in the cage with smaller animals. If one has parasites, that's also another set of vet bills for all 4.

The males will fight when they are old enough to breed. They can cause great harm to each other and their cagemates.
Also, when you see them 'cuddling' they are hardly doing this. The one on top is creating dominance, which creates stress and can lead to fasting, illness, and death.
Also, you should feed the balls in their enclosure, if your doing that with more than one it is extremely dangerous and heightening possibilities for cannibalism.
Get 3 tubs from target with clip on lids (thick clips on the sides that pull over the lids). Melt holes into the sides and get some flexwatt and invest in a nice thermostat from reptile basics.
www.reptilebasics.com
I also suggest getting some hides from them as well. Log hides are terrible for ball pythons and are stress causers more than relievers. That big hide is also far too big for a ball python as they prefer super snug tight hides.
Trash the heat lamps, they are terrible. Put the animals on newspaper, aspen, paper-towels or cypress. The bark you have is ok, it's difficult to clean and is hard to see when a snake defecates.

Even if they don't have feeding problems, chances are, they will eventually or have other issues that I've talked about above.
Also, for tubs you can get ceramic water bowls (easy to clean) from the cooking isle in any food store.
For your tank, it needs to be set-up something like this..
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...t-Up-guide.jpg

This is how I have some of my tubs set-up. With different hides and sizes in tubs of course.


Edit: Also, those temperatures need to be accurate. You can't just throw heat lamps and some un-digital heat gauges in there and think it's fine. You must not guess. Those gauges are extremely inaccurate and should be replaced with digital thermometers with probes.
Hiding ball pythons are happy ball pythons. If they are roaming, that is a bad and stressful sign.
I'm also curious, what are you feeding them and how often?