Newcomer looking to jump into the scene.

[CircleOfSnakes]

I assume that was the "silver bullet clutch" thread?
That's Albey, the guy I bought Uli from I got to see the bullet when I was there picking her up, and it was SO cool! A pewter has a single Cinny gene and a single Pastel gene, while a bullet has 2 Cinny genes (from both parents) and a Pastel gene. (I don't know much about snakes, but I'm a bioengineering graduate student, so I know plenty about genetics). So you can get silver bullets from 2 pewter parents, or a pewter and a cinnamon. That's why I'm going and talking to Albey when I need my Pewter haha. He's got some *great* looking snakes!

Clearly I'm just trying to convince everyone else that pewter is THE morph to have. Maybe people will start breeding some more and they'll be cheaper when I get mine

Wow, I'd almost be tempted to save a little more and go ahead and get a female Pewter now. Almost. Unfortunately I'm getting pretty eager so putting it off longer than I have to won't work, lol. I also would love to eventually be able to get some Ivory babies.

Jumping in a little late here - but if you think there's even the remotest possibility that you may wish to breed in the future, I'd recommend picking up a nice normal female. That way, you already have a female who will be closer to being up to size.

Albey and Justin are both great guys! Don't be afraid of shipping - I've had the bulk of my collection shipped to me with no problems - when you deal with professionals, you'll be fine!

This is how I set up babies. That's a 15 quart tub from Dollar General, I think $3. Note that the human heat pad was temporary until my flexwatt and thermostat arrived.



The hide in the right of the picture is made from a plastic flower pot saucer with the entrance soldered out. Shortly after this picture was taken, the green hide was replaced with an identical flower pot saucer hide. The saucer cost $.47 each.



There really is a baby in there:




A year later - here's the same baby:

Beautiful snake ya got there. And thanks for the input, I'm taking all I can get at the moment, and the pictures really help. Do certain substrates help keep up the humidity? And also, I've heard people say that you shouldn't have your heating source on the bottom directly touching the surface of whatever the tub is sitting on, is that really something to worry about?

I'm not trying to discourage you from buying from a breeder. I'm just pointing out that there are exceptions to all these generalizations about Petco being so horrible... It's not always the case...

I get ya. Really just depends on the place and the staff. I'm looking into the breeder idea, though, but I'd be comfortable purchasing from the local place I talked about. They aren't a big chain, I actually think they're privately owned, and definitely know what they're doing and talking about, and the shop itself is in tip-top shape. So we'll see.

Believe me, heat tape (or flexwatt) isn't all that complicated.
As another poster already said, you can have it all wired up and sent to you. If you're going to be moving up to bigger tubs,
I'd reccomend it instead of an UTH. Trying to move a UTH from one tub to another is horribly tricky, because if you just pull it off,
it might not work properly after that, or you might have some
serious hot spots due to broken wires inside it.
With flexwatt, you just gently peel off the tape around it, and you're good to go for as many tubs as you need to upgrade to.

Just my 2 cents.

Yeah, I realized that I can get it all pre-wired and such, and that turned me on to the idea a bit more. Most likely, though, what I'll do is just keep this tub in its baby-shape and when I decide to move my first snake into something bigger, or the tank, I'll already have a tub ready to go if I decide to get another one (and if the addiction that seems to run rampant throughout these forums is any indication of what will happen to me, I can count on it).