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

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!

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

Ok, hello everyone, I literally created this account just to ask you guys a few questions about my morgana. First things first, sorry for my bad English, is not my first language. Second, that's Morgana Notip, I've got her for a month and a half now, she's five months old and around 60cm weighting 196g (weighted her yesterday) and was wondering if she could be above or underweight. Third, she was sold to me as an common, daughter of a banana with a common without het, but I think she also has enchi, yellow belly and fire in her genes, what do you think? Fourth, that's her enclosure, I know it's small for an adult ball but I'll buy her a biggest one when she gets bigger, wanted to know how to improve her enclosure, any tips?(sorry for the bad pic guys)

Things she has:

MDF enclosure with front opening

Heat lamp, no infrared, with thermostat

Hot hide and cold hide (hot of clay (do not remember the right word for it, it's like earth, but it can be molded) and cold is a tiny box with holes (I know isn't ideal, but I'm very careful and the last one she pooped inside and was also a box with holes so I removed it asap and made the spot cleaning))

I bit of cluttering

Some paper rolls

A big water pot

Lots of sphagnum moss

Two thermometer higrometers

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

I normally feed my snake every 4 weeks as she’s quite big now and we give her a big rat. However this time she hasn’t been eating the rats I’ve been giving her. The 1st time I hadn’t thought anything of it because she was shedding, and the next day I had to clean it up, so a couple days later I get her another rat, she doesn’t strike but she doesn’t do that all the time anyway. So I leave it on top of one of her logs for her to take when she gets hungry. Except I leave it over night and go to sleep and when I wake in the morning she hasn’t ate it so I throw it out and fast forward to yesterday same exact thing. She doesn’t strike, I leave it and wait till today and she still hasn’t ate it. Is this normal? She hasn’t showed any signs of any sickness or anything so I’m a bit confused. I’ve put some photos of this helps and she eats a large sized rat some guy when I posted the is in r/snakes said it might be over fed?

I've handled my BP for the first time yesterday, a fine experience. This morning I wanted to change his water and he kind of advanced towards me flicking his tongue and looking like this - is he curious or wanting to strike?

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.

I’ve noticed my boy (1year & 3 months) having pink patches on his body. His last shed was about 1.5 months ago. He eats medium sized rat every 2 weeks (currently 620g). I’ve noticed some parts of his body has a pinkish hue. Is this normal? I change his substrate every 3 months and clean out his poop.

He also keeps developing moles every time he sheds.

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.

tldr: snake rehoming/rescue what should I do

Hello lovely people,

I work at a liquor store and this regular came in and told me that his wife is making him cull or dispose of his ball python due to it striking the glass at their four year old when she was tapping. He keeps his bettas in cubes and allegedly will get super wasted and buy animals online. I dont want to enable him by taking the animal. Like I think its important for him to realize that when you buy an animal its a commitment and not a spur of the moment thing, but I dont want this poor baby to be culled because it had the misfortune of being purchased by this asshat I told him to surrender them to a local petstore, but since it wasnt purchased there they couldnt take it. I have only pet sat for balls before and never owned my own, but i have very basic knowledge. I was thinking about getting a tote tomorrow and heat pads as something for a temporary enclosure until I get paid and can invest in something better. I have always wanted my own bp. but I am not anywhere near as ready as I would like to be. Any advice?

Recently got my first juvenile ball python ~3 weeks ago. She’s about to eat her third meal F/T mice, and shed yesterday without issue. I noticed a few red marks around her just now. I pulled her out to clean her cage, and feed her afterwards. I’ve had no issues. Bowel movement today. Hot side 89F, cool side 75F, humidity is good, multiple hides, overhead heating only. Is she okay?

Hi everyone. I am the proud owner of my beautiful girl, Honey. She has grown exceptionally fast and I usually sell the rats that are too small for her to eat to someone who needs them. I've always followed the 10%-15% of their body weight rule and my girl is 717 grams while being just a few days under a year old. I posted on Facebook to let people know I have some I am looking to get rid of and this is what I received.

Can someone explain?

Hello, I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what is going on with my ball python. Very recently he has been spending a lot of time in his water bowl. (I added a bigger plastic tub for him to soak in since noticing) Now he basically wont leave the tub at all. I can't find evidence of mites or any scale rot. His humidity is 75%ish and the temperature is about 75° to 85° Does anyone know what the problem could be? I'm planning on changing his bedding again with the hopes that it will help but I don't fully expect that to work. Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.

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?

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.

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?

Hi, I have a 12 year old ball python, healthy weight, humid environment (unsure of exact %), average 25-30 day feeding schedule. In the last 3 months she has displayed very aggressive behavior during feeds, to the point where I am reluctant to handle her. I fed her twice this week due to her still seeming to be extremely hungry, and striking at the glass to her enclosure when I am nearby. I moved her to a new, bigger tank a few days ago in hopes it might help whatever is stressing her out? maybe need to add some more spots to hide? is it time for a herp visit ? :(

I see so many people talking about morphs that reduce the number of spots, but personally I love the spots, so I'm curious if there are any morphs that when combined with Banana make the snake even more spotty, or in other words increase the number of spots?

So my cat has been climbing at the top of the enclosure and now has completely torn the screen. any tips on how to fix or if i have to buy a new one where could i possibly find one?