Well, we thought ball pythons were similar to red tailed boas. (They're not.) We've tried live and F/T and he turns his head away from both of them. We wait a week before trying the next attempt. We're hampered by not having a pet store near us (40 miles to nearest) to sell us what we need quickly. We rely on a feed store and the options are limited to what's on hand, which is minimal. Otherwise we would have tried rat pinkies because the mouse pinkies seem kind of small for him. We are using an anolog device to measure temp and humidity. (We're broke for the moment.) The humidity is 65%, temp is 90 on hot and 80 on cool side. This will not change once we get him into the tub but only improve (think positive). One major problem is that we've only got one hide for him, which is on the hot side.