RCReptiles.com

[Radical]

I just purchased my first ball python, currently it is about 5 months old, living in a 30 gallon aquarium (36*12) with a heating pad underneath, and a heat lamp.

Above the heat pad is his cave, in the middle is a large water dish, and on the other side is a 2 foot long wooden thing glued on a rock that goes up diagonally to just past half of the tank. The substrate I'm using is newspaper, one unfolded covering 2/3 of the tank, and another folded underneath the cave and above the heat pad.

I feed him a few days after receiving him from a breeder, but my first mistake was not using tongs/tweezers. I was dangling a f/t pinky by its tail with my fingers and that didn't go so well. He ended up nailing my middle finger and wrapping around tightly, I tried blowing on him to see if he would let go, but ended up having to unwrap him by the tail and once I got the majority of his body off he finally released, then blood started coming out of tiny tiny holes on my middle finger :? .
After learning my lesson from the stupid feeding error, I used tweezers and everything went well.

The snake is very very easy to handle, hasn't attempted to bite my hand when I was reaching in to pick him up, or acting aggressive while I was holding him. The snake has been in my possession for about a week now, and before it would usually tuck his head underneath his body whenever I would touch his head, but will now let me rub his head/underneath with little to no problem.

I have been maintaining the temperature inside the tank to about 28 degrees average, but my room gets fairly hot sometimes and it rises to about 32-33 by the time I wake up in the morning, but about an hour after that when I get the fan going the temperature usually drops back down.

The snake doesn't appear to have any bugs, sometimes it sounds like he breathes out in a hurry so you hear a type of pout (this is very occasional, like once every few days maybe), and when I bought him a week ago he just finished shedding, there was some skin still left around his head/neck and a bit on his eye, but that was all rubbed off within the first 30 minutes when I put him into his new tank. Also a few days after he ate, he left a nice present for me underneath his cave.

If I had to guess, the snake would be around 2 feet long, maybe a bit more, and at the widest about 5-6 inches girth around the large part of his belly.

So if you're still reading my novel, I have some questions.

What size food should I be feeding him, and how often?

Currently I'm using water from the tap, will that harm the snake in any way?

Is it fine to maintain a temperature around 27-30 degrees without letting it drop much lower than that?

How often should the snake be handled? Could he be handled too much?

I was told by the breeder that it was a male, but a girl at the pet store told me she thought it was a female, is there any way to accurately determine the sex?

Alright, thanks, that's my story, I'll be posting some pictures of the snake and aquarium when I can get ahold of the digital camera, but I believe I described the setup in a fair amount of detail.

[Radical]

Here's a picture of him in my hand, I took this with my webcam so it's not the greatest quality.

[slitheringin]

From what I can tell, he's a good looking boy/girl. You're lucky; when I tried to take a pic, Shifty just poked his/her head under his/her belly and hid

[lindsey_marshall00]

Peanut loves his picture taken-- our little show off. 8)

[Radical]

[Radical]

Here's an overview of the full setup.




Here's the snake.



Here is the cave.



And here is the stick/water dish.

[stumpy_wigmaker]

Hey radical, beautiful looking snake! Hey where did you get the log and water dish? I love that set-up and have been looking everywhere for something similar but with no luck! Any help on where to find ether would be great!!!!

[Jordan700]

You can feed him something that is as big around as him, or a bit bigger.
I use tap water (from a well) and I have seen no problems.
The temp is about 82F. That is fine, but shouldn't go much lower.
You can handle the snake every day, as long as you havn't fed it within the last 48 hours. If the snake stops eating, you may only want to handle it every other day or less.
The best way to sex it, is to probe it. Or you can use the popping method. Take a look at Ron's main site. He has some useful articles on there. http://www.rcreptiles.com/articles/snake-sexing-methods.html
Hope this helps!

[Jordan700]

I have the same water dish. I got it from Petco about 6 years ago. It weighs a lot, and so people don't usally want to ship it. But you might be able to pick one up at Petco.

[Radical]

I picked up the log, dish, and cave all at super pet.

[deborahbroadus]

[Radical]

Yeah, it's a thermometer stuck to the glass, I just take that as an average temperature and assume that the side with the UTH is the warmer end, and the other side the cooler end.

Although I'll most likely take your advice and get the other kind.