Hello from Iowa

No issues haha, we only offer suggestions, always go with what you want, it is your snake at the end of the day you will hopefully have for a long time haha. Still want them pictures though :stuck_out_tongue:

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Welcome from Indiana! I just received my first ball python yesterday and will be keeping her in a terrarium (with blacked out sides) once she is well settled. Very happy with her.

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Congrats on getting your snake.

Just an update: we are getting our snake tomorrow!! Can’t wait! He is a fire, enchi, pastel. A very good looking dude. Will post pics after he gets here. Still waiting on more stuff for his tank (enrichment stuff, another hide, some foliage and a climbing log or twig if you would. Lol). That stuff won’t be delivered till Monday.

Sounds good :slight_smile: cant wait to see him!

Nagini and his terrarium. Sorry about the pic of Nagini. It’s a little dark.

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Here’s a better pic.

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very nice snake and set-up. and welcome to your obsession (it will happen!) :grin:

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Yeah, I love my snake already. He is such a cutie pie. Can’t wait for him to settle down. He has been climbing everything trying to get out. Our light has a blue light that we turned on and we also turned our living room lights blue to help darken the room a bit to try and make it easier for him to calm down.

You will need to turn the light off in his enclosure, black out 2 more sides of the enclosure, and not have it in a traffic heavy room with lights (dark rooms are best). The reason it is constantly moving is because of stress and it doesn’t feel safe. Starting a baby BP in such a large enclosure is not easy and unless you have a lot more cover then chances are he won’t eat or thrive and won’t be able to settle in. BP babies are not good to put in display cages for this reason. You should rarely see your BP unless it is nighttime and it is hungry. I also recommend 3 smaller hides with 1 entrance each, small enough that the BP has its back and sides touching the hide. And of course make sure you don’t bother it or handle it at all. Outside of water changes.

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I assume for the handling you mean for the first week or two while he settles down haha. Blacking out the sides in sure would help, but i think with extra hides as you mentioned wouldnt be necessary (unless he refuses to eat longer than a week). But if he doesnt settle down thats definitely a way to make him more secure! I just would hesitate making knee jerk reactions to a snake trying to escape day 1 haha. Large tanks for ball pythons are definitely difficuly starts though. Too much open space means danger to them.

beautiful snake! Thank you for sharing! @ashleyraeanne brings up alot of good points for making him feel more secure until he gets used to his new normal!

He has settled down now. He is staying in his hot hide more and yes, I have three hides now. One for cool side, one in the middle, and the hot hide that has one way in/out. He seems to like it. Last night he was just cruising around nice and slow and not looking for a way out. Though I did find out that he likes to climb and it causes me severe anxiety cause I’m afraid he’ll get too cold. In fact I had a heck of a time sleeping cause of being anxious.

Beautiful enclosure, you did a very well job a decorating it. The Bp is also very beutiful. :>

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I wouldnt be too worried about it, ive seen people who have no issues with them being under 80 degrees for extended periods of time, i doubt he is going to freeze to death climbing around before crawling back into his warm hide haha. Sometimes snakes prefer cool, sometimes they prefer hot, if he uses climbing to cool down, its just his way of thermoregulating most likely :slight_smile:

:grin: Yeah, when I got up this morning he was back in his warm hide. So I was happy about that. He seems like he’s becoming a pretty happy boy. His last feeding was Wednesday so we will see how happy he is in two days when I try to feed him. He’s still on live hoppers as of right now. I think in a couple of weeks we will be working on the transition to frozen/thawed. I want to make sure he is comfortable before transitioning him.