New to Ball Pythons

[Johnny Hive X]

Im hopping in now, before reaching the end of the thread...

Starmom, papers now use soy ink, so it's not toxic.

Bark is hard to clean and the paper is nice, but I prefer decorative. I use aspen. And sometimes the aspen mixed w/the coconut husk bedding. Easy to see the poo and the urates. You just need to clean a little bit bigger area than just the urates to get all the moisture. Astro-turf would be difficult to keep sanitary. I started with reptile carpet w/my first snake, and even though I washed it regularly, there was no guarantee that it was clean or sanitary.

Log hides won't provide enough cover/security for your little guy. The hides need to be identical and close/snug fitting for him to feel safe.

Moving around a lot from home to feeding tub to home again will often stress out the baby. Even bigger snakes can stop feeding b/c of the moving around about being "taken" out of hunt mode. They're ambush hunters.

If you feed FT, thawing at room temp is good, but then warm it up with a hair dryer or hot water, being bagged. Feeding cold food to your snake can cause digestive problems, or reluctance to grab it, if it's not warm enough.

82-84* cool side, 92-94* hot, thermostats on your UTH/lamps. If a tank & screen, cover all but a couple small areas < for ventilation > with tinfoil, plastic wrap or glass, to help trap in the humidity, and then you don't have to worry about bacteria growth in a moist towel. I tried paper towels for a while on top, but they were more hassle than they were worth.

Having your tank / tub all set up and stabilized is very good planning! Good for you, reading up and learning, BEFORE you get your new pet.

I'll give the Aspen a try then! Thanks for the recommendation. Is it true that the thickness should be no higher than to the first joint of you index finger?

I'm going to get two identical hides off of the website provided earlier. They are a standard black and are inexpensive. Do you keep one of the hides at the warm end of the tank and one of them at the cooler end of the tank?

I'm going to feed the snake in it's home tank. I'm not going to transfer back and forth. I plan on handling it as much as possible (reasonably) so it shouldn't confuse me for food.

I plan on insulating the tank with probably cork board and foil tape on the sides and then foil and duct tape on the lid.


Does anyone have recommendations on how to secure the lid? I want to keep it as closed to locked as possible. I've seen a terrarium that has a slide in place lid and two holes align to fit a lock or nail through. Is there another method of securing a lid other than that or just putting a weight on it?