New ball owner - Advice?

[Crawdad]

My only question would be why have you waited 12 days to feed a hatchling?
I feed mine every 3-5 days and most feed every 5-7 days.
12 days is too long in my opinion.

It's actually only been 10 days today since the previous owner fed him, but even then, we have had him for less than a week (will be one week tomorrow), so I am still waiting for the week to be up before I disturb him with food or anything -- I have just been spot cleaning the cage as needed, and changing the water every 2 days for now. I'm more worried about his stress level than his hunger at the moment. I think the extra few days between feeding will be well worth it if I can get him to take food in his new enclosure. Once he takes food, I'm going to start offering at the standard 4-5 days.

I bought an Acu-Rite thermometer and a oil heater for the room today, so I don't have to keep my whole house heated while we're at work. I've got the vents to that room closed off, so I'm (theoretically) just going to rely on the heater to keep it at temp. It's a very small room, so it shouldn't be a problem, unless any of you see a problem with that.

Edit: And they are addicting, haha -- my wife (who up until last week said NO! to snakes) is already looking at info on morphs, and corn and milk snakes. I told her we'll wait until we're sure we can take care of the ball python first .