Feeding in a seperate tank

[Quickone4u]

You don't have to worry about your snake ingesting substrate anyway - so that's a moot point.

As for them learning to associate the opening of their enclosure with feeding - maybe if that's the only time you interacted with them....and I stress maybe.

But in 30 years of keeping snakes I've never had an issue with snakes associating opening the tub/door with food. There are species I keep in pairs and must feed separately - now those snakes have bit me when I go to move them after their meals, but never upon opening the door.

I'm just in awe of all you people who have these amazingly intelligent snakes that do things mine don't - like have issues ingesting substrate, become blood thirsty biting machines when the door is opened, display cognitive learning behaviors, etc.

I have a serious question for all you separate tubbers:

How is it that your snakes are smart enough to associate the opening of the door with food - especially when you also open the door to clean, change water, cuddle and stroke them, etc. but magically don't correlate the feeding tub with food? Especially since that's all the feeding tub is used for - feeding.

How you feed your snakes is up to you, but you all seem to be going to an unnecessary hassle in an effort to head off a non-existant problem.

At some point you may move beyond ball pythons and might find out the hard way that hungry snakes should not be moved before and after their meals.

+1,000,000
I myself started out feeding in a separate tub several years ago and the only time I experienced any negative attitude from my snake was during this time because he knew tub time was feeding time so he was in that mode. As mentioned above, if you are interacting with your snake more then just feeding time then it's not going to associate you with food. Only once you plop the prey in and they pick up the scent,heat, movement.
No troubles whatsoever once I switched to feeding in the enclosure and I remove a thing our two each time myself just for more room. Really how hard is it to pick up a thing our two out of the enclosure? I could understand this being an issue if you have snake numbers in the double digits but most people have rack systems and minimal objects in the enclosure by then anyway. Also,i have always used aspen bedding and just recently switched to cypress mulch and have never had a single problem with substrate ingestion! Just my .02