Changed things up, snakes didn't eat...

[Sauzo]

I use ReptiChips myself and haven't had any problem except the last time I kind of wetted it down too much so I had steam on the front doors of my cages for about 4 days. But I just put down about 1" of substrate on the whole bottom including hot spot over the flexwatt. The snakes just push the stuff away if they want more heat and even push it away on the cool side to create a 'nest' I guess. My BP actually seems to eat better now with a 70% humidity vs when on aspen but it might just be my imagination.

Anyways my temps for everyone are about 78-80F cool side, 90-95F hot spot and ambient is whatever it is in there lol. The humidity is kept around 80-85% except for the dumerils who is at like 60% and the BP who is at like 60-70%. All of them bounce from hot side to cool side to sometimes in between behind their water bowl except my sunglow who seems to not be that fond of the hot side unless she has just eaten.

- - - Updated - - -

So I'm still continuing the experiment, I put substrate over the hotspot and this is the fourth feeding that almost all my ball pythons missed! So I've decided to go back to my original setup and move the substrate away from the hotspot, put the ball pythons directly on the bottom of the tub on the hotspot and 'nestle' them with Repitchip (none under the snake). I'm thinking that just that one inch of Reptichip under the snake kept them from getting warm enough on the hotspot and causing them to go off of feed.

A snake can and will push substrate aside to get to heat if it wants more. That's why when you take temps with flexwatt, you take it from the bottom of the cage/tub and not the top of the substrate.