Quote Originally Posted by tttaylorrr View Post
immediately i see a few red flags:

you warm side is too cold. the floor over the hot spot should be 90° F. how are you reading and taking temperatures?

the move could definitely be contributing to his sudden reluctance to move about the enclosure.

i'm confused: you bought new hides because he's outgrown the old ones, but you haven't replaced the cool side hide because it's bigger?? EDIT: are your hides identical?

so you use a heat lamp for heat, correct? is it a bulb or CHE? is that being controlled by a thermostat as well?

answering these questions can help me (or others) narrow down some things to get to the bottom of this. TBH when i saw the thread title, i was expecting to read about a snappy baby and i was aaaalllll ready to share my journey with taming down my feisty Coffee Bean lol.


Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. Here are the answers to your questions:


1. I use a a digital thermometer from Lucky Reptile (https://www.amazon.de/Lucky-Reptile-.../dp/B002CWWR2S). It's a bit imprecise.
Inside the hide it should about 90 degrees. The hide is right under the heat lamp but the sensor is a bit further away. That's why it's often a few degrees colder. I've put the sensor inside the hide a few times when he was in the other one and the temperature was always fine.
There's a thermostat attached to the heat lamp but has never become active since the temperature is really stable. It's programed to stay between 31 degrees Celsius and 34 degrees Celsius which is, as far as I know, the right temperature for a ball python.

2. The hide situation is a bit more difficult. Someone gave my an old hide when I first got my ball python and I thought it was a good size. Since I read that it's better to have identical hides, I bought the same model but for some reason the new one was slightly smaller (but just barely, almost not noticeable).
Now I've bought two new (identical) ones but I've only replaced the one on the hot side because I thought that could encourage him to leave the other one. He still fits into the smaller hides but if he grows any bigger, he will lift the hides up.
I thought of changing the bigger hide to his smaller hide again(the one I replaced) but I'm afraid to stress him out because he seems quite stressed already that's why I didn't change it again. That's also the reason why I haven't replaced the other hide yet.

3. I'm not sure what a CHE is but I use a heat lamp. I've used it for 4 month (that's all the time he's been in the terrarium; he was in quarantine before that) and I haven't experienced any problems with it up until now. It's an infrared heat lamp. I know that he can see the infrared heat but I've done lots of research and found this to be the best way to heat his terrarium. He has not had any problems with the bulb all this time I had him in my terrarium.