Quote Originally Posted by Dutti View Post
My 4 years and 10 months old male ball python is currently 4 feet long or almost 4 feet long. Would he reach 5 feet in the future or he will continue to grow in girth only? I,m asking because i just built for him a new enclosure, size in feet: 2 long, 2,62 deep, 3,30 high. I am wondering if this enclosure size would be enough for him forever or i will have to upgrade in the future?
2 feet long is way too small for a 5 foot snake no matter how you try and rationalize it. They would benefit more from floor space. They are arboreal to an extent but they arent skilled climbers like boas. My pied girl is 4.5 feet long and will be 4 years old next month and i have her in a T10 with a shelf and that is plenty for her and she is a very active BP. half the time she sits out laying around lol.

In my opinion, the sweet spot for cage height is 18-24 inches. Anything higher requires the addition of an RHP to warm the air in the cage unless you keep the room around 78-80F.

And i would be very surprised if a male BP reached 5 feet. Like i said, my female pied is 4.5 feet and 4 years old next month. At last weigh in she was just over 1600 grams and that was after her 6 month fast. Since then she has been eating 2 small rats or a medium rat every week. And she was a garbage can as a baby and ate anything that got close to her. Sure you dont have a female?

Bottom line, there is nothing wrong with going for a tall cage but you need to balance it out with the floor space as this isnt a GTP and even those, you still want at least 3 feet of cage length for an adult. My rule of thumb is i have my cages long enough for my snakes to stretch out. The only exception is Caesar my retic who atm is in a T25 72x30x18 with a shelf and he is 7 feet long. I will most likely be upgrading him to a T65 next summer 96x30x18 with a shelf and giving the old cage to my suriname.