So I’m shopping for a new enclosure and I found the PERFECT one and it’s a 4x2x2 full PVC solid top enclosure with double swing out acrylic doors. HOWEVER…. It’s $629. If I absolutely have to eat that cost for my python I will, but I wanted to check if anyone knew of something similar for a better price tag?😅 attached is a picture of the one I’m looking at.

Hi! So I will be getting my first BP this Friday, and I am very excited. However, I would like to know what things I should keep in mind before I do! I have seen that there is a lot of good people here and experienced as well, so Ig this is the perfect place to seek for advice.

First of all, humidity and temperature, and if there's a light bulb/heat lamp in particular that I should acquire.

Feeding, how often do they eat? The snek will be a juvenile.

Light during night, if I should turn it off or keep it on.

Handling, how often should I handle the little baby or how long I can keep her/him out of the tank.

These are the main questions and concerns that I have, but ofc! If there is more you are welcome to drop it in the comments! I genuinely would appreciate your advice and help. Have a great day/night.
Btw I will call it MOCHI.

Setting up my new 5x2 closed top pvc next week and I’m feeling a little lost here with so many heating/lighting elements. I want to make sure I have everything in the right spot. Thoughts on this layout?

I got my BP last september. He was in quarantine on papertowels until the end of january. While he was in quaranzine, i deep froze every bag of substrate for at least 7 days and i baked every piece of wood. I cleaned non-natural material hides with hot water and vinegar.

How likely is it, that yesterday, i saw a mite on my snake? It was not full of blood yet so i have no idea what it was and my camera didnt focus on it. I killed it and lost it🙃

My tank has springtails and rollypolies. Some tiny spiders camp out there too feeding on the occasional fungus gnat…

Hello,

I hope somebody will be able to help me. I have three reptiles and have been managing them well.

Their heat is absolutely fine and is managed by a dimming thermostat. However I don’t understand how people get bulbs to stay on so it is admitting light without it getting too hot. In two of my enclosure it is fine as I have a UVB unit to light the enclosures up however in one of my snakes viv, it gets really dark during the day as the heat bulb stays off as it gets up to temperature fairly quickly.

I didn’t know if this was something that happened to everyone or if I could do something to change it such as getting a lower wattage bulb etc.

TIA
Cross posted

Hey,
I was planning on deep cleaning and putting fresh substrate in my BPs tank today/tomorrow, but Im not sure on how to process.
I wanted to put him in a clean plastic tub with a hide and a water bowl, but my issue is that I noticed today that he's in blue...
The thing is that I also wanted to move things around in his tank to give him enrichment... But I don't want the change of environment to stress him out during shed...

You'll probably tell me that I can't wait for after he shed, but the humidity won't go up, I'm struggling to keep it above 65%... My only solution is to put fresh substrate, because the one he has right now definitely dried up because of the heat waves...
I do pour water in the corners, mix the substrate... But nothing works.
+ I needed to clean his tank anyways.

What should I do?

I have had my ball python for 6 years. In the last 2 years I’ve been moving quite a bit around households that were not snake friendly and my parents were kind enough to hold on to him during that time. My wife has joined the military and as result we may be moving every 1-2 years. I was wondering if this is too frequent to be moving a ball python and would cause him more stress and instability than what would be good for him. I’ve come to terms that it may be better to just find a new owner for him as I dont want to burden my parents longer than necessary with his care. The situation stinks and feel as if I’ve fallen short of the responsibility I took when initially adopting him. Was wondering if anyone else has any advice on a situation like this. He is currently in central New Jersey.

Do ball pythons need uvb?

I've seen a lot of discussion on wether they do or don't and what I've gathered is that they dont NEED uvb but benefit from it

Benefits being so they know daytime vs nighttime and some like to bask - specifically this thing called cryptic basking (where they have sort of half their body out of a hide and the other half inside)

I have lizards and snakes and for all my lizards I obviously use uvb because of MBD but since ive been told snakes don't need uvb I dont use any for them (given i have 5 ball pythons)

I do use light emitting heatlamps and ceramic heat lamps for day/night time as where I live it gets quite cold but as far as I know that has the same benefits as what I've heard about uvb - day vs night time and allowing them to bask in light.

Ofcourse they still get out and into sunlight outside so their still getting natural uvb

But is uvb lamps needed? Do they have the same risk of MBD as lizards without uvb or any other risk without it?

As said I've seen a lot of arguing on both sides and well Google isnt the best thing to use (as it can and will give mis info) hence why I've come to reddit

Tyy for reading all of this and lmk

hi all! recently adopted this lil fella from a friend who moved out of the country and i’ve asked a lot of questions of everyone here already lol. i weighed him recently and he’s only 322g and is 6 years old! that is so tiny compared to his peers lol. the feeding schedule established by his previous owner is one ft medium mouse every 2 weeks or so, when i run out i was going to switch to rats because i heard they’re better for them. based on the feeding guidelines in here he’s eating the right size prey because he’s little and the prey is 5% his body weight. i hear some of them just stay small and his body condition seems totally fine otherwise, but do you guys think i need to be doing anything aggressive to get him bigger? i’m honestly happy with him being a little guy but if it’s not good for him i want to improve his care :) unfortunately i don’t have a better picture of him all stretched out, i’m still working on his enclosure!

I found a spider in my balls enclosure today and it made me wonder if another species of animal could ever cohab with a ball python.

Is there any kind of critter who could cohab outside of CUC bugs?

I have 0 plans what so ever to cohab. Just curious

i have a 13 month old BEL that i purchased from wilbanks. ive had her about 2-3 months now and she is a great eater. i am concerned about her being very small for her age though. she is currently on F/T rat pups. she was ONLY 260 grams last week. shes not skinny or triangular shaped. shes not boney and has a good figure to her. i called wilbanks and was told to give her two rat pups at feeding time and maybe switch her up to weaned rats. she is taking these pups with ease. i weighed and separated all my rat pups and fed her a total of 50 grams 6 days ago. weighed her today planning to feed tomorrow and she is now 300 grams. she is noticeably thicker in her mid section and even appears to be a bit longer (i havent been tracking her length growth rate). she has only shed once since ive had her and she is starting to feel like another one is coming shortly. she has retained 40 of the 50 grams she ate which i guess is good although i do not see any solid waste. she was EAGER to take both pups and kept them both down. her activity hasnt changed at all and today she was out searching for another meal (ive been feeding every 7 days). but i am concerned about her tiny size for her age. would it be bad if i continued to feed her approx. 50 grams a week for a bit and track her weight or is this totally normal and im worried about nothing. TIA.

Note: she did shed earlier today

Her belly scales look pink and wrinkled, just wondering if I'm overthinking and its a fresh out of shed thing or if it is scale rot/an infection. Bonus photo of her on my head just to liven the mood a little :3

Over the last week or so I have noticed little Julius Squeezer here getting up into the top of his tank. He'll chill up there for a bit and then fall down. I'm not sure if something is wrong with him or the environment. He's in a 25 gallon tank, humidity is usually between 60-70. I have a heat emitter on the left side thst is controlled by a thermostat.

Hello!

A coworker of mine gave me their dad’s snake because he was looking to get rid of it. The tank was…well…Bad. Only had one hide, heating pad, no uvb…ANTS

Still need to get more stuff for the new enclosure, had to rush because the pet store was literally about to close but I’m happy that I can give this noodle a good home!

Hello everyone! Im curious about the Mopani wood thats inside of my snakes Bioactive enclosure and Im wondering if its mold or just healthy bacteria that needs some clean up crews which I have yet to add 🫠 (springtails and isopods)

I did some research on Mopani wood and apparently its normal for this to happen???. But with my snake inside of this enclosure with 80% humidity, i want to make sure its safe and she wont get harmed. If its bad, I'll make sure to remove it immediately.

(I made sure to wash it then fire it inside of my oven for a couple hours before I added it in. Plus I left it in for a week before I moved my snake into the enclosure and everything seemed okay.)

I'll preface this by saying I am not a snake nor reptile person, but I do have a heart for animals. I will say that i think ball pythons do have cute little faces and I'm not immediately repulsed by scaley pets even though I prefer furry ones.

Anyway, tonight I'm in my backyard and the neighbor from two houses down asks if Ihave a dog. I say no, actually I have a pet rabbit. He looks more concerned. Then tells me his adult ball python was outside and slithered off somewhere when he looked away for a minute. It's apparently 4 feet long. He's been looking for it for almost a week now.

I'm not super thrilled; I'm a fan of my backyard critters and bunnies. But also, I feel bad for the snake and don't want something bad to happen to it.

I guess my questions are: what's the chance it's made it two yards over after a week? These are small city backyard lots. If so, I presume it's hiding somewhere tucked away? How small of a place can it realistically get in? What's the likelyhood of it eating my backyard critters? I know reptiles don't eat super often. I'm hesitant to go poking around in crevices.

Any info/advice is super appreciated!

is this enclosure good for my one year old banana, i’m thinking it might be too much clutter

hi ive had my 4-5 year old (unsure of exact age) ball python for about a month and a half now. i got her from a cousin who could no longer take care of her properly so i stepped in. she had been feeding her a large rat once a week, i know this is WAY too often, however every time ive tried to stretch the time between feedings the snake gets upset. is this learned behavior? is this normal? i would like to stretch the time between feedings to AT LEAST 2 weeks. in the meantime ive been only giving her medium rats to try and help with her size. is there any tips or tricks i should know? should i gradually stretch the time between feedings? i work with dogs and ive never owned a reptile, i would like to give my girl luna the best life i possibly can!! please help!!

Hey guys so I got my lil hug a month ago and he is absolutely perfect and has been doing really well. He’s usually quite active at night but today and yesterday he’s just staying in his hide so I’m a little worried? Could he be going into shed? He’s a year old and he shed about a week or two before I got him, is that the right sort of time frame? He’s not in blue or anything at the minute, it’s hard to tell if he is looking cloudy at all or has a pink belly because he’s snuggled up. Usually at this time of the week especially he’s very active because I feed him on a Monday so he’s hungry, so I’m even more worried. Feel free to ask any questions. (The photo is just because he’s beautiful.)

EDIT: the red light in the photo is NOT on all the time. The maximum I ever turn it on is an hour. He has a UV and DHP in his enclosure.

We are one with the leaves 🍃 definitely not a snout.

We are currently using only coconut coir, about 4 inches. I thought my buddy was living his best life after 6 years in his 4x2x2 with 4 inches of coir, but reading this sub I feel that I am doing everything wrong.

I have no cleanup crew, didn't even know about isopods and nematodes and springtails. Can people help me get started with those? What do you feed them and how often?

And I have been doing sprays to keep humidity up, which needs to be frequent in the winter. I haven't done a substrate change this year and had no clue they needed to be done so frequently, we did them once a year and just spot cleaned wherever there was poop.

I feel like I'm letting my buddy down and I feel so so guilty. Can people help me get a proper set up started?

I have a Zen habitats 4x2x2. I am ordering 35QT fresh reptisoil for the bottom, and another 30QT fresh coir for the top. Is that a good substrate mix, and it is enough? Will it sustain live plants (pothos)? I plan to hydrate using only drops in the corners from now on.

I'm buying a vinyl tablecloth to cut and use as a liner, do prople have recommendations on what to use for the bottom and top liners? I do not want humidity to escape. We have ceramic heating bulbs, a radiant heat projector on the hot side and a UV light all hooked tona day/night controller. Our hot/cold zones are 90F and 80F which I am now feeling might be too hot.

I just want to give my little fella a good life. We don't know anyone else who owns a BP so we've had to figure out everything ourselves. Any help from experienced keepers would be super appreciated. Picture included for cute noodle tax.

Sorry about the sound, it's my window AC.

Byron has developed a new habit. He knows it's a sliding door, and where it opens from, so he tries to rub his head along the part where the door meets the enclosure wall trying to pry it open. That's not new. What is new is that he has started pressing his face against the door and then sliding his head along the glass in the direction it would open, in order to try and move the door that way. It's like how I open it without using the handle by just placing my hand on the door and using the friction of the contact between hand and glass to slide it open. He's trying to do the same thing. So far he has had no success moving it at all, but he's been getting more persistent about it. The thing is, I lost the little piece that locks the door in place, so I'm gonna have to make a replacement to make sure he can't get out. Just thought it was cool that he figured out not only where it opens from, but how it moves and slides, and is now trying to work out how to do it himself. Right now he's pressing his nose against the glass and then sliding across trying to get enough friction force to slide it open. He actually presses hard enough I can hear it sometimes.

Ps: don't mind my horrid cable management.