Share your Advanced Practices!

[Kaorte]

Another thread gave me the idea to start this discussion. I know a lot of you (myself included) have unconventional or advanced methods for keeping your animals and I'd like to dedicate this thread to sharing these practices.

This thread is not intended to be a care sheet or any kind of reference piece for a new and inexperienced keeper. It is for those of us who wish to learn from others and maybe discuss controversial issues that we wouldn't normally talk about on threads geared toward newbies.

I know I don't do everything "by the book" and maybe we can learn from each other about alternate methods for keeping these animals instead of regurgitating the same information over and over.

Some topics for discussion:

Quarantine

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures

Hides or No Hides

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays

Co-habitation

Breeding

Assist/Force Feeding

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator)

Live and F/T Feeding

Substrate

Lighting


I know a lot of these things have been discussed at length in the past, but it is always useful to review and update our practices. Some threads are outdated or end up off topic or don't have a resolution. I'd like this to be a place where we can share detailed information, pictures, videos, experiences, and stories. This is not a place to criticize people for "doing it wrong". If you don't want to share your practices for any reason, thats' perfectly fine!

Lets give the Advanced Husbandry section some love! I will spend some time outlining my unconventional practices and I will post them here.

[mlitz]

Hope this turns into a sticky, looks good.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Quarantine

60 to 90 days

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures

76/78 Ambient 86/88 Hot spot (cooler months) - 84/86 Ambient not hot spot (warmer months)

Hides or No Hides

Case per case

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays

None

Co-habitation

Preference 1 per enclosure, capable of successfully maintaining more than one animal in an enclosure.

Breeding

Year round.

Assist/Force Feeding

When necessary, case per case, when and for how long may vary (hands on experience necessary) - How to available on this forum already.

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator)

Incubator

Live and F/T Feeding

Live

Substrate

Newspaper, Cypress & Aspen

Lighting

Daylight

[rafacacho]

60 to 90 days

76/78 Ambient 86/88 Hot spot (cooler months) - 84/86 Ambient not hot spot (warmer months)

Case per case

None

Preference 1 per enclosure, capable of successfully maintaining more than one animal in an enclosure.

Year round.

When necessary, case per case, when and for how long may vary (hands on experience necessary) - How to available on this forum already.

Incubator

Live

Newspaper, Cypress & Aspen

Daylight

Almost the same, but I do keep the hot spot all the year, and I feed F/T, It´s easier for me to pick all the rats for the month and keep them in a exclusive for rats freezer, also I dont mind leaving a dead rat overnight....

[Kaorte]

Quarantine:
My quarantine practices are not as great as I'd like them to be, but I do successfully quarantine against, mites, RI's, parasites, and other common illnesses. It is my opinion that unless I have a completely separate building to QT in, I will not be able to successfully quarantine against major collection destroying illnesses. Until I have the means to quarantine on that level, I will continue to quarantine in a separate room for 30-60 days against mites, RI, parasites, and common illnesses.

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures:
I use a hotspot between 88º-92º (varies from shelf to shelf) and an ambient temp of 72º-75º. Eventually, when I have a reptile room. I'd like to maintain an ambient temp of 78º-80º which will help reduce the load on my various heating elements.

Hides or No Hides:
It depends. For picky eaters who like to use a hide, I give them one. Most of my adults don't have a hide and just go under the paper. Most of my babies have hides, although I think they would eat fine without them.

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays:
I've done one in the past for cresties, but I wouldn't do it for a ball python simply because I don't want to set up a beautiful display for a snake that spends 90% of its time hiding, or that might flatten natural plants. I would however consider doing PVC displays for some of my cooler morphs.

Co-habitation:
Haven't done it, don't plan on it. Except for breeding.

Breeding:
I don't do a temp drop currently. Perhaps I will change my mind, but this is my first breeding season so I'd rather just keep it simple and keep the temps constant. I've witnessed many locks and have a few females building. We shall see how effective my methods are.

Assist/Force Feeding:
Thankfully haven't had experience with this.

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator):
An interesting topic, but I will go with the incubator just so I can watch the eggs more closely and get the female back on feed as much as possible.

Live and F/T Feeding:
I do both. I don't sit there and watch every single live feeding. I just plop them in. I check on them after 15 minutes to make sure they ate. If they don't, it goes back into the colony for next week.

Substrate:
I use paper towel, indented kraft paper, and cypress mulch. I'm considering switching everyone to cypress once I have a reptile room. Mainly because I have no where to store a giant bag of cypress mulch.

Lighting:
Nothing specific for the ball pythons.

[satomi325]

Quarantine

6 months in a totally separate room. Vents are close and sealed to avoid cross contamination by central ventilation system.
I work with my resident animals first. I clean, handle, maintain, and feed the residents then work on quarantine animals after.
Feeders are bred by myself so if a QT animal does not eat, the live feeder stays in the QT room in it's own tub set up to be saved for another day or fed off immediately to my ferrets. That feeder does not go back to the colony to avoid cross contamination to the other feeders that would be fed off to the resident animals.

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures

Winter:
88-90 hot spot.
70-75 ambient

Summer:
88-90 hotspot
80 ambient

Hides or No Hides

Hides to all hatchlings and picky juveniles.
Adults do not get any hides. The enclosed rack acts like a giant hide itself.

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays

None yet

Co-habitation

Yes. For breeding purposes.

No, for non breeding purposes. However, I have done so on purpose in the past.
Due to the whole "can't-co-habitation" committee, I decided to house 2 females of the same age and initial size together for a year as a personal experiment.
I kept the same routine as my other snakes. I qt, fed, watered, cleaned after the two girls the same. I am an advocate for not feeding in a separate feeding bin, so I used a barrier divider to keep feedings separate without physically removing the snakes from their enclosure. No health or behavior issues ever arose. One female eventually outgrew the other female by 500 grams, so I decided to end their cohabitation.

Breeding

Enclosure temps: 90 hot spot, 70-80 ambient (depending on season)
Cool down: I don’t do designated cool downs. The ambient temperature may change depending on the seasonal room temp. But in general, I find that cool downs are an unnecessary extra step that could potentially result in RIs.
Enclosure substrate: Newspaper
Side note: I do not provided water bowls or hides in breeding tubs.
Humidity: ~ 60%
Lighting: Increased darkness that correlates with natural daylight in Winter here in Northern CA.
Breeding intervals: I pair snakes for 4 days. Then I separate them back into their own tubs for 4-7 days in order to recuperate and feed, then I pair them again for another 4 days, and so on and so forth. Parings will continue until the female ovulates.
Feeding Status: All adults are fed live small rats. The big girls are fed multiple smalls. Nobody has gone off feed yet. I will continue to feed my breeding snakes as long as they want to eat.

Assist/Force Feeding

Just to jump start slow starters or when a hatchling looks deathly thin

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator)

Incubator - I want as much control over my eggs. Keeping the conditions in the female tub perfect is more difficult. There is more variability in environmental factors when maternally incubating.

Temps: 88
Humidity: 99-100%
Incubation medium: Equal weight of water:perllite

Live and F/T Feeding

Live

Substrate

Newspaper

Lighting

Natural room/window lighting

[Rob]

6 months in a totally separate room.

Wow that's some serious QT, hats off to you for being so strict.

[h00blah]

I've kept ball pythons for a while and learned a few things, I'm not sure if I'm "advanced". I'll participate anyways .

Quarantine

Different racks - 30 days and/or 2 sheds.

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures

91

Hides or No Hides

Hesitant feeders get hides. Picky feeders get hides. Bitey/hissy snakes get hides. I use reptile basics hides.

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays

None - I use simple tubs in a rack system.

Co-habitation

n/a

Breeding

n/a

Assist/Force Feeding

n/a

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator)

n/a

Live and F/T Feeding

I prefer to hang out with live rats and feed f/t rats to my snakes. I take the number of rats I need out of the freezer when I wake up (around 10 AM), place them in a plastic bag then let them thaw until the sun begins to go down (6 or 7). Then I place the bags in a large plastic container and fill it up with hot sink water for about 30 minutes for medium/small rats. 10 minutes is normally good for fuzzies/pups/hoppers. I take the rats out of the bag, and press on their stomachs to feel for cold spots. Normally by this time, they're warm. Sometimes 1 or 2 rats will still be cold so I just leave them in for 10 minutes at a time, then re-check. I keep this up until I know they're good to go. Then I dry them off and offer to snakes.

Substrate

Aspen for the water bowl tippers, paper towels for the rest of the snakes. I'm actually going to switch from paper towels to aspen for my 41 qt tubs.

Lighting

Daylight - no bulbs of any sort.

Here's another few:

Sexing

Popping (don't know how to probe)

Heating Element(s)

Belly heat via flexwatt heat tape controlled by thermostat. I use a helix, vivarium electronics, and Ranco I believe?

Cleaning

Sink washed using hot water and soap. Since I use paper towels, I'm unable to spot clean. Hoping to change this when switching to aspen.

[Mike41793]

Some topics for discussion:

Quarantine

I don't have room for a separate rack so i just make sure im careful to handle my collection before i handle new additions and to wash my hands in between.

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures

87/88degree hotspot. The cool side is usually high 70s and the ambient temp never goes below 70.

Hides or No Hides

Depends on the animal. I have a small collection so providing a hide for most of them isnt a big deal. Most of mine don't need them though even though they have them.

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays

None. All are in a rack.

Co-habitation

I have no reason to except for breeding. I doubt id ever really try it bc i dont really have any interest in it.

Breeding

Male goes in with female(s) for 3-5 days usually twice a month.

Assist/Force Feeding

Never have had to.

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator)

I'll be using an incubator. Maybe will try maternal someday for my own interest but otherwise ill be using an incubator.

Live and F/T Feeding

Both. I thaw the rodents in a plastic coffee can of warm water. Once theyre thawed ill let them sit in it for like 15min in hot water right before i go to feed.

Substrate

I use newspaper for everyone.

Lighting

No special lights are used. Natural sunlight or if the lights on in the room.

EDIT: i dont really think anything i do is advanced. Its just how i do stuff and what tricks ive learned.

[3skulls]

I don't think anything I do is advanced. Sometimes I will feed on the first night I receive an animal and I handle them in that first week.

My Cal Kings and Rats don't have a hot spot right now and are doing great.


I do have a question. For those of you that vend shows. Do you place everything you don't sell into QT after?