Hello everyone, I am a first time snake owner. I have a normal ball python about 3 months old. His name (after a lot of thought) is Zeus.
I have been reading a lot here on the forum and talking to a few people about husbandry. It has been very stressful because I've gotten so many different things told to me about how to set up a home for my snake. As of right now I have a 40 gal tank, with one hide on the cool side, a hide on the hot side, a heavy water dish in the middle under an infrared 100watt bulb. I have an under tank heater on the warm side with a 150 watt heat lamp. I also have a plastic log looking thing under the hot side so that he can climb and bask under the heat lamp. Oh and a reptifogger too..
Im having issues keeping the temperatures and humidity stable, it can be 90-95 on hot side and 80-85 on the cool side, but that drastically drops my humidity to less than 20%.. If I turn the reptifogger on, it'll climb to 50-60% but my temp drops to 80-85 on hot and 70-75 on cool.. At night, the temp on the hot side is around 80-85 and on the cool side it's at 70-75.
At night Zeus is very very active. He is everywhere, he climbs and dangles from the thermometer wire and sometimes falls, which to me seams like it would be painful. During the day he hides behind the long log thing sometimes over the uth and other times, on the cooler side of the tank. I noticed after I put the reptifogger over his tank, he doesn't go in his hide (which sits right under the reptifogger)
the first week I got him, he didn't eat. So I waited a week and tried again with a new method. The first time I took him out of his tank and put him in a 20 gal empty tank and threw the frozen thawed fuzzie in there and covered it up and left him for a while... Nothing.. This time I left him in his tank, waited until night time, turned the heat lamp off but left the infrared on and threw a fuzzie in there, and bam! He ate almost instantly. I read that BP don't over eat so I fed him two more fuzzies and a pinky. He went for them quickly and ate very well.. A couple days later I actually caught him pooping. While pooping he started convulsing and making weird hissing/gurgling noises, he scared the crap out of me, seemed like a snake seizure almost.. After that happened he seemed normal and went back to moving all over the place like usual. I inspected his poop, but I'm no expert so I didn't really notice anything wierd.. There was a hint of blood in it though.
I know I've kinda been rambling here but I would really appreciate any and all feedback from anyone about anything I wrote. Thanks for reading and I look forward to learning everything that I can about these wonderful creatures.
Ps he curls around my wrist and doesn't move an inch.. Seems happy.. Right?