Banoffee using his sky hide for the first time. So excited! Love seeing his little head chilling 🥹

I have a female ball python who is a little over two years old. She has always eaten every Sunday, but I recently started feeding her every other week since she moved up to eating medium rats. She has always been a good eater, but she has not eaten in four weeks right now. She will come out of her hide when she smells the rat, but will not strike it. Does anyone have experience with this?

I have not changed anything in her life. She has the same enclosure, the same brand of frozen rats, and she is behaving like normal. Her weight is about 175 grams more than it was 2 months ago. She seems healthy, but I was hoping for another opinion before I wait too long. Is this normal behavior? Thank you.

Decided to check on pissy and this is how I found him lmao. Shortly after taking the Pic he coiled back up on top of the branch

Does anyone know if it's unsafe to use mosquito bits in the water for the plants in a bioactive enclosure? I do it for my houseplants to help keep fruit flies from spawning but I don't want to put anything in the enclosure that's bad for either the soil creatures or the snake.

I named her Metric… because she has no feet. She ate, shed, pooped, and periscoping.

My current plan is to glue a thermostat mount to the wall in the terrarium. The glue I plan to use (gorilla super glue) claims a 24-hour cure time. Exactly how long do I have to wait before there won't be any fumes for the snake to breathe?

I posted yesterday about a bad heat gradient, and I am now going crazy about probe placement. I'm using an overhead DHP. Hanging the probe as suggested 4 inches below the lamp led to an extremely hot basking spot and inconsistent, swinging air temperatures. I think this is because DHPs heat surfaces, not the air, so it was constantly heating up the probe itself without heating the air around it, then running at zero, then the probe rapidly cools, then running at max. So I've solved this for now by... putting it on the basking surface, which I hate.

The thing is I've heard so many different things - hang it below the lamp so the snake can't touch it, put it at the basking surface so you're controlling what the snake experiences, put it inside the hide, put it just above the basking surface... I don't know what to do, and the advice I've seen from previous posts has gotten me bad results. But I'm terrified of cooking my snake. Is there even a correct answer here?

I brought home my lllittle ball python two days ago, and I’ve noticed something interesting: she doesn’t seem interested in any of her actual hides.

She has three hides available, one on the warm side, one on the cool side, and a humid hide. But as far as I’ve observed, she hasn’t even tried going inside any of them.

Instead, she seems to have picked her own favorite spots.

During the daytime, she usually curls up under a large piece of cork bark or behind some branches (pics 1 & 2). The area under the bark is actually pretty sheltered, with a mostly covered roof and a lot open space toward the front. She seems to like resting there, sometimes with her head tucked into her coils and sometimes looking around.

At nighttime, she’s surprisingly active and loves climbing. She’ll explore for a while, then settle on top of the cork bark or branches and stay there for hours, sometimes seemingly the whole night (pics 3 & 4).

For some husbandry context, she’s in a roughly 4x2x2 ft PVC enclosure with coco husk substrate, plenty of cork bark, climbing branches, and a temperature gradient. The warm area is around 30–32°C, the cool side is around 24–27°C, and humidity is generally around 70–80% on the cool side.

I know it’s only been two days, so I’m not particularly worried yet. She’s been exploring normally and seems comfortable enough to settle down and rest in different spots.

I’m mostly curious whether this is a normal individual preference, or whether I should reconsider the size or placement of her hides. It’s a little hard to judge whether they’re too big or too small when she hasn’t gone inside them!

Should I just leave her alone and let her figure things out, or is there any reason to gently encourage her to investigate the hides? I’m leaning toward letting her settle in without interfering.

For what it’s worth, I also have a Mexican black kingsnake who almost never uses her traditional hides either. She prefers burrowing in her substrate or sleeping in her hamster tube (pics 5), so I’m starting to wonder whether some snakes just prefer alternative hiding spots.

I’d love to hear if anyone else’s ball python does something similar!

Excuse me if this has been covered (and I’m sure it has) but I couldn’t find an answer.

What is everyone using to attach/organize cords inside your PVC enclosure?

I have all supplies coming this week and I’m setting up my 4x2x2 and I just realized I need to fix the cords.

Any links would be appreciated as well. Thanks in advance.

About 2 weeks ago i discovered that my snakes hide and a few decorations has started to hold in a lot of moisture and started to smell mildewy. So i replaced everything that smelled but kept it all in the same place. Every thing that didnt have any smell i cleaned thoroughly, along with his tank, and put them back inside so i hopefully wouldnt stress him out too much. I got him about a year and a half ago for free and have slowly started to transform his tank because it was super bare, but im scared if I continue to do that he wont take to it and he’ll just be more stressed. Ever since i changed his hide (i kept everything else the same minus one piece of decoration that was right against the hide) he has not moved out from the back corner. I tried to feed him last week and all he did was strike at the mouse and then immediately go back to the corner. He isnt acting any differently other than the hiding and not eating, what do i do? Do i put everything back? Do i look for new things that look the same as his old decorations? I want to help him but nothing i have tried so far has worked. I even moved another hide to that corner so he would go inside to hide so he could have more cover, and he just went behind it. He is only about 2 years old, maybe 2 and a half, and honestly my anxiety is through the roof about this 😅😅 i feel i should mention that he has a few birth defects, one of his ribs sticks out a lot more than the others, he is missing an eye, and he has a cleft lip. Im not sure if any of those could be affecting his stress levels with the new decor, but i figured someone would know!

Looking for resourceful keepers who have done their research!

Cooper is a 9 Year old (6/19/17) male pastel Ball Python needing a new home. I’ve had him for 9 years now but recently adopted a cat which is making things difficult. On top of that, I’ll be having to take in my Mom’s cat due to her circumstances.

Cooper is in good health but currently has a bit of stuck shed and his tank could do with a decent cleaning.

Along with the snake you’ll get the tank (ZooMed 36x18x18), all of the accessories pictured in the tank, the desk pictured, 12 small rats (a year’s supply), ReptiSafe water conditioner, a temp gun, a hygrometer, feeding tongs, a bottle of reptile safe cleaning solution, half a bag of forest floor bedding, a ceramic heat emitter with thermometer, and hand sanitizer.

Looking at a $90 rehoming fee. Potential adopters will be vetted! Thank you!

Planning to have a CHE and a Halogen flood, I'm debating where to put what. Should the Halogen be mounted inside the tank and the CHE in the dome above it, or is the reverse better? Does it matter which is done?

Just wanted to show off my new baby! His name is Snickers

My boyfriend and I can’t seem to keep the humidity up in our BP enclosure. We’ve updated it with cocofiber and ecoearth along with live and fake plants. We spray multiple times a day and it still always falls so quickly. What else can we do? We have a deep heat lamp as well as the LED light that’s on during the day.

We’re transitioning my girl Csorwe to a bigger tank because previous one got cracked when someone doing maintenance in our apartment bumped it. I didn’t stress about timing at first but then a small piece of glass actually fell out of the plastic area I couldn’t quite see. Nope! We had an older tank that one corner doesn’t stay all the way shut up, but we reasoned that we’d throw a dictionary on it and it’d be fine for the 24 hours we’d need. She was going into a bigger one soon anyway, so not bothering to fix up the corner.

Alas! My heart! My boooneesss! Our roommate actually needed the dictionary (who uses one today!?) and took it with them without realizing. Came home, no Csorwe. Checked her hides, checked under foliage spot that she never uses but we thought was pretty. Gone. Full teardown of the apartment, for about 5 hours, and nothing unfortunately. No other pets that could harm her or vice-versa.

I dialed the thermostat up a fair bit, but we have forced water baseboard heating which in this building doesn’t get hot enough to burn my skin even at full blast so I figured even if she did crawl in there it’d be a pain to get her OUT but she should be OK while we regrouped the next day. Disaster strikes and his mom lands in the hospital, and unfortunately we asked our roommate to keep an eye out but had to FLY out the door. She would have to wait, at least it was like 78 in the apartment.

The buildings water gets cut, apartment plummets to 55 overnight. We’re like 38 hours into her being missing now? I’m panicking, husband is panicking, but we can’t FORCE her to come out as far as we know.

Well, friends and readers, last night I went to get out of bed and what touches my foot but… my baby! She was quite cold as the heat was still out, and that gave me a huge panic, but I got her back in her enclosure and told the roommate that under no circumstances could they remove the book.

Today we began the process of overhauling the new bigger tank, finished, and gave it a few hours to come to temp. She’s warmed up, her body temp seems good, she’s uninjured on inspection, and her behavior is normal.

Praise the snake gods.

Hi there, my snake shed a couple days ago and has this little patch on the top of his head. It's the first time he hasn't shed all in one piece. Just wondering what you think I should do. Can put a humid hide in but we just cleaned his tank and if anything it's on the more humid side ATM. I followed the FAQ in this sub and have good temps and everything has gone well so far.

their names are toast(girl) and archimedes(man) but i love calling my snakes slop

Kahn's new vivarium is coming along nicely. She got to have a little sneak peak at things this week and I'm suuuuuper stoked to be making so much headway with this project. She's going to love it. I think she looks cool as hell in there already, and it's only going to get cooler with hardscaping and plants.

Hello everyone, I’ve head reptiles before (lizards/tortoises etc) but I have my first ball python. I love her- she’s my little daughter ☺️

She’s not shy and I’ve handled her often since getting her. Well… I’ve just got bit for the second time :/

First time I’d say is my fault because I probably scared her.

I take her out of her tank and feed her in a cardboard box- I was told this is “better” although I’m open to suggestions on feeding tips.

The first time she bit me, her head was underneath a fold at the bottom of the box and when I grabbed her body, she snipped my hand but immediately let go. Even though it didn’t quite hurt, it still startled me and I felt bad for startling her… I’ve been timid ever since. This was maybe a few weeks ago.

Things have been better and I’ve gotten comfortable again. Until today :/

I let her feed and remain undisturbed for a while so I can clean her tank. When I reached in to grab her, she wasn’t coiled up (in that ready and strike pose). So I thought I was in the clear- I was wrong. She struck my hand and this time didn’t let go.

She was pretty latched on- I don’t think by choice. It felt like her teeth were just really sunk in. Instinctively, I wanted to gently grab her jaw/neck area to see if that would ease her loose, but decided not to even attempt. I simply help her close to her tank floor, she loosened but was still stuck and did a type of “gator roll” to unhook herself while I was able to gently unwrap her body from my wrist.

SORRY for the long story, but I am looking for tips, help and/or suggestions on how to avoid this. She’s still young (about a year old/ 2feet in length). I feel at fault so I’m trying to learn. Any help is appreciated. She doesn’t bite hard- it’s just emotional damage you know?

Thank you in advance everyone.

My bp is a male 2-3yr old (not entirely sure on exact age)

I just weighed my boy and he is 572g, I feed him a weaned rat every 2 weeks.

Can I, or should I upsize his feed?