new BP owner with feeding questions-help!

[Michelle2622]

I know there are a lot of threads regarding BP's not eating but I don't have the time to search them all so I'm posting just to see what kind of information I get, any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am a new owner of a BP. We got her a little over a month ago. The previous owner was feeding her medium to large rats
, he said she is about 4 years old and she is a little over 4 foot long, not sure of her weight. He wasn't sure when she last ate but he said it had been at least 6 weeks since she ate, so in total she's gone about 12 weeks since eating. We kept the tank that she was used to which is a 125 gallon glass tank. We purchased a new UTH and its directly under her hide on the hot side which she is always in, we also have a 150W heat lamp on that side, the other side is her cool side with her water dish which she occasionally lays in. She mostly stays under her hide but does come out at night and stroll around her tank, we know this because her bedding is matted down in trails where she goes. I'm not sure if her setup is correct, how does everyone heat their cold side and hot side? Her hot side temps are right around 80 degrees and humidity is 60 %, she did just go through a shed and she shed normally and then she pooped the next day. We were thinking that she should be ready to eat by now and we purchased a small rat last night which we tried to feed her. She seemed interested in the rat but didn't kill it. We tried full grown mice as well and she killed one of those but didn't eat it, this was 3 weeks ago. The previous owner fed her live prey which a rat bite the top of her nose and we finally got it healed and she was fed in her tank.

[Morris Reese]

You gave a lot of detail here without giving details.
What is around 80? Is that belly heat or ambient air temp? I hope you have a TSTAT on the UTH.
If 80 degrees is belly heat what is the ambient temp? 80 is a little too cool for ambient air and 10 degrees too cool for belly heat. Get the ambient air up to 82-85 and the belly heat to 90-92.
Are you using the same enclosure she was in for 4 years? If not this could be one reason she is not wanting to eat. I recently helped rehome a 12 year old BP who was an avid eater. She very rarely refused a meal. The guy wanted to give her away due to going off for active military duty but did not want to give up the enclosure so he could get another snake when he returns in a few years. The snake was rehomed and never would eat. Tried assist feeding and it didn't work. Tried force feeding and it didn't work. She died after 8 months of stress and no food. This is the very reason I tell people to be prepared to care for the snake for up to 30 years.
One thing you may want to try is completely black out the glass tank and give her total privacy. Don't try to feed her every day. Try one day a week and keep it to that. A 3 month fast is not that bad for a 4 year old BP. Give us some more detail and let's see if we can help.

[Michelle2622]

80 degrees is the ambient air temp How do I increase that? We have a 150 watt basking bulb and its on for 12 hours a day and the temp never reads higher than 80 except when it is hot in our house. She has been in the same enclosure for the past few years that her previous owner had her in when we got her, she got moved to our house in the same enclosure and all we did was cleaned it out and provided a new hide and changed the location of her water, like I said she had stopped eating for him for 6 weeks before we took her. I do have a zoo med reptitherm thermostat and heater, it doesn't have a temp reading though just a dial that goes from green to red, we have it set in the orangish red section, should we put a thermometer on top of the uth to measure the temp or how do we do that?

[bcr229]

You need a temperature gun or IR thermometer to measure the surface temperature of the tank's surface over the UTH. Then you adjust the thermostat as needed to get the surface temperature to 90*F. The thermostat probe should be sandwiched between the UTH and the bottom of the tank.

[Michelle2622]

and what about the ambient air temp? How do i raise that?

[bcr229]

If the ambient is 80*F I would worry more about correcting the temperature over the UTH for now.

[Michelle2622]

ok, thank you for your replies

[Morris Reese]

and what about the ambient air temp? How do i raise that?

Just like bcr299 said. Let's get the UTH IN LINE FIRST. That's more important. If I have read everything correctly here, you do not know what the floor temp is at right now? Work on that first, but if you have a glass tank I would guess that it also has a screen top? If so, do you have anything covering it?

[Michelle2622]

No I do not know exactly what the floor temp is at right now, just know that it is set a notch above the middle of the dial. The tank does have a screen top, on the cool side we have a thermal blanket covering it and the hot side has the lamp on, is there any way to cover that as well?