Um, cooking your snake is cooking your snake hun, regardless of the heating element. It's all equally bad.

A 12' cord from Home Depot costs me $1.49(thereabouts). I solder all of my connections because the clips are worthless. Solder is extremely cheap and will hold the connection for years. All you have to do is ASK Rich to solder the connections and he will. You just have to buy the cord.

And why never more than 1/3 of the tub? I cover up to 3/4 of the tub if I need to to get proper temps in quarantine tubs, and it works fine. As long as they have a place to cool down, it is okay.

How many Ball Pythons do you have??