Hello! I just got my first ball python and I’m so excited to be Dr. Wyrms new mom. I wanted suggestions for his tank. Right now I have a 100watt red night time bulb, a heating pad set to 95 degrees, a cold hide, a warm and cold water bowl and I’m going to get a warm hide tomorrow.

Should I get a 75 watt regular bulb and turn it off at night or leave the 100w nocturnal one on all the time? Thank you in advance!

i also saw a tiny tiny bug crawling on him but no bite marks on his body and his body is white so i should be able to if he was bitten

Hi I’m new to owning a BP and is there an easy way to tell between the two ? I had to take her to the vet and they said they couldn’t say 100% which it was but treated her for scale rot. I ended up getting ssd cream as well just in case cause I want her to be okay. But I’d love to be confident in the future. Also any advice for giving my bp her shots ? I hate doing it.

I thought it was just staining at first, so I tried rubbing him a little bit with a wet paper towel and a tiny bit of yellow came off so I thought oh surely this is just substrate staining! Yay, that’s easy to fix. But then it just stopped coming off at some point and it just stayed there. So what do I do now?

Got him out again, we had some company and I wanted to show off my new baby! Nobody else held him, just looked. He's opening up a lot now, and has been so silly lately

He also ate his third meal last night, Im so proud of him! We ordered a 2×2×18 tank for him while we save for his final. Did not realize how quickly he was gonna grow..

Hi everyone I’m a first time snake parent and this is my ghost girl Eleanor (Nora) we got her Friday and she’s formally starting to venture out ! If anyone could leave any tips on handling feeding anything really it would be greatly appreciated, her current hot side temp is 92 and the cool side is 78 her humidity is at about66-67 .

Live in the PNW so cold weather isn’t a HUGE concern but I am a bit paranoid of my wife leaving a window open on a trip, or something like that.

I have a setup in mind but want to check with yall for safety concerns before finishing buying everything.

I envision 2 combo hoods, hood 1 (warm side) has a halogen bulb for IR and visible light in the daytime and a deep heat emitter for the night set to a few degrees below daytime heat.

Hood 2 (cold side) has a nighttime DHE as well set at minimal temperature as a backup in case of unexpected cold. Hood 2 also a daytime visible lightbulb.

The DHEs will be setup to a thermostat but not a timer so they can always serve as a backup, the visible lightbulb would be set to a timer, and the halogen bulb would be set to both a timer (daytime) and a thermostat.

Any reasons that this might not be safe? Thanks everyone :)

Idk about yall. But my BP identifies as semi arboreal. F the terrestrial life he says. (For those who may be concerned- he has 5 hides. He chooses the climbing life. And- who can blame him??)

We got our first ball python 4 weeks ago. He's had these spots along his spine since then. What could they be? They feel rougher to the touch but haven't gotten worse or better?

After 4-5 months with me, Phantom's burns are gone. Any trace of stuck shed is gone aswell.

We've had our snake for three years and in the past couple of months we've been catching him fairly frequently soaking in his water bowl. I know this is not normal behavior. We have one other ball python in a nearly identical enclosure who is not doing this behavior. We don't see mites on either snake. My husband and I are both veterinarians if that qualifies us more to make that assertion. We have examined them both several times. The water bowl is on the cool side. I'm attaching photos of the tank and the thermometer/hygrometers on both sides. He's about three years old. I feed him one small rat once monthly around the 1st of every month sometimes a quail or chick (5-7% of his body weight per meal). He eats reliably. He sheds normally. Last shed might have been around a month ago. While we've been trying to figure this out we've been cooling down the tank. For awhile it was warmer -low 90s on the warm side, low 80s on the cool side.

Happy to answer any questions and take any feedback, I just want to help him. Thank you!

Hi Everyone!

My ball Python is about 5 years old at this point and I think its time he gets a bigger (And better!) tank to call home. I am currently thinking about getting a 4' x 2' x 2' PVC terrarium from Kages. Linked here.

I am then considering switching to radiant heat, opposed to heat pads and / or a heat lamp. That said, I would still like to get light in the tank so I am thinking about adding the 35" x 4" mesh option on the top of the tank so I can have an LED light illuminating the tank.

My first question is between the 80 watt (linked here) and 120 watt (linked here) radiant heat emitter. Will 80 watt be enough to keep the tank warm or is the 120 watt one warranted? Additionally, regardless, the emitters are between 22.5" long and 32.5" long. How do I regulate a warm / cool side of the enclosure since these both will pretty much span the length?

Additionally, if the 80 watt heat emitter is adequate, I could switch to having a 9" x 9" square mesh on the left / right side of the top of the tank and then place the 22.5" 80 watt heat emitter on the opposite side to maintain a hot and cool side of the tank.

Then just for clarity, this is the thermostat I would use with the heat emitter. Linked here.

I would probably create my own background for the tank out of silicon, foam, cork bark, moss, and coco fibers. My second quesion would be, will this work on this enclosure? Or should I just leave it blank / do something else?

Thoughts, comments, or concerns with the setup pictured in the post would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Debating if I should get this tank that I found on marketplace, Measurements are 72x18x23

It was so funny seeing him trying to periscope with the leaf around his head. He managed to get it off about 20 seconds later.

So I read the guide and all that but I still can’t process on the lighting and heating

The picture is wat the enclosure looks like

I recently decided to try out ceramic bulbs for my BP because the bright lights make it uncomfortable for me to sleep, the new lamp and bulbs just came in and I got the reptitrip dual bulb lamp with 160 watts in each socket, I’m currently running one of the ceramic bulbs although there is two in there. Is it safe to have two ceramic bulbs in there if just one is running? I keep seeing mixed reviews on whether or not ceramic bulbs are safe to be in a dual lamp together, should I take one of the bulbs out? Or is there a different lamp or heat bulb I should try?

Pippen guard of the citadel

Hey guys! I was hanging out with my sweet angel Vic on the couch the other day and he decided to go through one of the holes in a crochet blanket. I wasn’t too worried at first cause I figured if his head fit through the hole, the rest of his body would too. Well, I ended up cutting the blanket to get him out. But I can’t stop wondering if he could have gotten out of it. Thoughts?

Hi all, I’m looking to really get my husbandry on point and have stumbled across a few hurdles.

A lot of my research suggests keeping the warm ambient at 30-31c and cool side ambient at 22-28.

My tanks currently sit at 30c on the warm end and 25-26 on the cool ends, the inside of my warm hides temp gun at 27-28c

Does this sound right?

My boy Osiris is about 2 years old and for the first time ever he is dealing with a bit of stuck shed. I know humid hide and/or soaking him could help, but I’ve also heard and read that humid hides can cause scale rot, and soaking him in a tub would really stress him out….
Both things I’m trying to avoid. He does have a water dish on the warm side large enough for him to fit should he choose to soak (never seen this!) and humidity in general is around 65-75%. I maintain it by adding warm water to his enclosure every couple of days. I use cypress mulch as substrate.

I’d appreciate your thoughts and experience in the best way to deal with stuck shed. Open to any recommendations to help my boy.

Thank you in advance! 🐍✨

Hello! I’m a soon to be ball python owner as a friend of mine is moving overseas and I’ve decided to keep his normal ball python. This will be my first snake so I have a couple of questions.

He’s in a pvc cage that measures 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot tall. And it’s heated by a ceramic heat emitter with no light at all other than natural sunlight.

Is this a good permanent setup? Or anything I should change once he’s officially mine?

Thank you!

Okay so I know my girl is in a growth spurt but last week I think I definitely overfed her. The last pic was the day I got her at Aquashella. She looked healthy and hydrated and I don’t think that picture does justice to how tiny she really was. She easily fit in my palm. Breeder said she was eating pinky rat pups so that’s what I gave her the first few weeks. However after she ate she was really sniffing around so I’d run back to get her a hopper too to make sure she was good. She’d take it every time and instead of (what appeared to me as) looking for more, she’d laze out or hide which indicated to me that she was satisfied. 3 weeks ago she was 90 g, then I moved on from the rat/mouse combo to two rat pups which she seemed to appreciate. I know they can’t talk but she genuinely seemed happier when she had that meal. I re weighed later that week and she hit 140g. I kept her at the two rat pups until last weekend I gave her two and she still looked hungry so I gave her a hopper too. She was interested but took the hopper suuuper slow so I worried that the hopper was too much even though she took it. Acted normal after eating. I know I need to reweigh her to really see where we’re at with feeding and that she should only be getting 10-15% body weight until she hits 500g.

I guess my overall question her is, should I stretch out her feeding since I know I overfed her last week? She consistently eats every Saturday so I was worried it’ll stress her if I stretch her out until Tuesday I was thinking? Planning to reweigh before feeding again either way. She is my first snake so I like to think I understand her but advice from more experienced owners is always helpful and appreciated.