First off, welcome to the forum...glad you found your way here!

As far as housing I'd agree a 40 gallon aquarium per snake is very large for a baby ball python. They are very shy snakes that are easily stressed by large open areas in their enclosure and a stressed ball python is likely going to give you troubles when it comes to feeding time. If you do want to check out the option of either permanently or temporarily housing them in tubs I'd suggest using the Search function and putting in the either the word "sterlite" or "rubbermaid" and a ton of good threads will pop right up.

You'll find that terracotta pots, plastic bowls, etc. make great cost effective hides and are easier to keep clean and dry then cardboard. Actually we were surprised when we got into ball pythons how little we'd end up ever buying from a pet store and how much we'd find at WalMart, Home Depot, Lowe's and our friendly Dollar Store. The Accu-Rite or something similar sold by WalMart or Home Depot for under $20.00 is a great option to digitally monitor both temps and humidity. The analog ones at the pet store are notoriously unreliable.

Have fun reading through the threads and using the search function. Please let us know if there are any questions that come to mind.


~~Jo~~