Share your Advanced Practices!

[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.