Quote Originally Posted by bmeza2 View Post
Hello ball python owners
i am asking the ball python community ( you) a few questions to determine the best enclosure for a ball python. And it will be much appreciated if you can answer as many questions as possible. Any answers can be as long,short, complex or simple as you like. And if you can, please ask fellow owners to answer too. Any age of experience, number of pythons, age can the questions. And fill free to ask me any questions you have, I will do my best to answer them all.

Questions
  1. How many years (or months) of experience do you have with ball pythons
  2. How many pythons do you own
  3. what type of cage do you keep it in ( bio environmental, paper towel/ newspaper, soil, )
  4. pros and cons of cage
  5. behavior of the snake ( calm, anxieties, violent, always out and about, always hiding, etc)
  6. Personal opinion on the reason why you choose this type of set up
1. I have 5, almost 6 years of experience with ball pythons

2. I have 21 ball pythons

3. I have wooden vivariums for a few of the adult royals and two big RUBs for two adult male royals, all baby royals are also in RUBs, I use kitchen roll in the enclosures for the ball pythons

4. PROS:
RUBs are easy to clean and maintain and they come in all sizes so it suits the snake a little more individually (some like lots of space to explore and some like feeling more secure etc), RUBs are also inexpensive, ventilation holes can be added easily to control humidity and they're secure so no escapees, they also seem to have not great visibility through them which might add to the secure feeling for the snakes.
Wooden vivariums look really great, can have locks on the front which adds to security, they hold heat and humidity really well and you can make them really beautiful inside and they're spacious for snakes that like to explore which is great.

CONS:
RUBs in all honesty do not look great, sure they come in different colours but they still don't look like much of a display for such beautiful creatures, they also make it hard to see the snakes colours through the plastic but this is probably good for the snake so it's more of a pro than a con
Wooden vivariums can be a pain to clean and with the bigger vivariums you have to really get in there to do it properly, also it's hard to put ventilation in a wooden one unless it's done at the place you order it from otherwise it gets way too humid in there, I've also had a ball python rip out one of the vents and go for an adventure (luckily I found her before she got very far), they're also really not cheap where I get them

5. Every single snake (or any pet) has a different personality and I won't list them all since that'd be an extensive block of writing to read through but some that stand out would be that my very first ball python named Susie (she's a normal, coming up to 6 years old) is the nicest most docile snake I have ever come across and I can do anything with her and I trust her completely, she doesn't jump or hiss and has never struck at me and if anyone ever wants to handle one of my snakes I get her out first and she has helped a few friends to get over their fear of snakes and a couple to actually admire them, Susie is however a very picky eater.
Another to note how drastically the personalities can differ is my stinger bee named Beast, and she is just that, when I first got her she was very aggressive and would strike out if I passed her enclosure with all the huffing and hissing of a hognose, she has now calmed down a lot but is still not without her huffy attitude but she now doesn't strike out and I can handle her for short amounts of time without it being an issue, hopefully with more work and time she'll continue to calm down.
There's two royals I have that have a wobble, Nugget, a bumble bee and Salazar, a queen bee dinker paradox (he's a little bit worse than nugget as he really waves around sometimes and has really bad aim whereas nugget likes looking at ceilings and has bad aim as he's a bit wobbly) and despite the extra effort at dinner time they are both sweet and easy to handle and even with this they both eat very well and are both big or are going to be big respectively.
Quite a few of the baby royals enjoy exploring their enclosure when it starts falling dark so I like to change it every now and then and they all get to come out for some adventures sometimes, especially so a little albino male named Tesla, so far it looks like he's going to be a big boy so some bigger branches will be in order it seems!

Honestly I could go on for hours about them

6. I chose the vivariums at first as I thought I would only get one ball python (oh how long ago that was) and as the numbers increased (okay only one more, no more than 5, but this one is special, no more than 10 etc etc) I realised that it would be much simpler and easier to go with RUBs on a rack (after the third royal).
Now I started with the thought that I would never breed reptiles as I didn't know they were so loved by so many people but soon realised that of course they were look how great they are and will be this year starting my first breeding project (yay) and with this it's pretty clear that RUBs is the way to go for me due to the expanding collection.
I would have preferred to have them all in amazing naturalistic matching vivariums but it's not that great when you have so many. (Even with the reptiles having a whole room in the house, I figured a rack would be the way to go)
I did put a lot of research into a rack system with RUBs before hand before I got more snakes as I wouldn't have any more if it was going to cause issues for them being in RUBs and they were shown to work even if they aren't the prettiest enclosure.


Wow that's long, sorry I tend to ramble about them once I get going
Here's a free young Salazar:





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