It really is tuning in and paying attention to your snake.
So, back in March I got a swanky new PVC enclosure for Mr. Bo Nanners. With it I also got a top of the line radiant heat panel. Feeling i was doing the best for my slithery friend, i moved him from his old sterilite tub to the new cage. He ate the first week, but soon my ever hungry boy went on a food strike. My worst fear.
For the entire month of april, i adjusted the temps, turning it up or down, and obsessively checked everything with my heat gun, adjusted the humidity over and over. My next idea was to try different foods, smaller sized rats, mice, leaving it in over night, …nothing worked. I added more clutter, took some out, put in things i knew he liked…to no avail. Mr Nanners would just not eat.
Then, out of the blue, it hit me. I gave him back his under tank heater. I was under the impression that the heat panel was all he’d need, as it imitated natural sun heat shining down.
Low and behold, he ate his next meal, and the one after that and the rest is history, he hasn’t skipped a meal since.
He loves his new cage and all i had to do was give him back his belly heat.
No, no, the sun heats from above, so belly heat is an unnatural abomination and only used by boomers who hate their snakes and refuse to learn new things. Hail Reptifiles!
So sorry. I lapse into Newb Caresheet Crusader mode now and then. Lol. That’s awesome! So glad you figured out what makes (made) him tick.
Thank you thank you thank you for this post! I’m going to bookmark it for future reference! I am an old school (terrible BP mom) tub keeper non bio active (don’t want bugs crawling on my snakes) and I swear by UTH from successful experience! Even my exotic vet who is also my friend says that snakes need BELLY HEAT!
I have seen so many posts rejecting UTH because of what people have read or seen but have no real experience with it. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. In the wild the sun heats the ground and the warm ground heats the belly of the snake. Simple as that. There will be disagreement here and that’s fine but you and I know what works from experience….
Good for you for figuring it out, @moonxtal. I guess it’s a case of “if it didn’t used to be broke, go back to that” to paraphrase a bit. Lol
Pretty much. There’s room for multiple ways to do things as long as they meet the animals’ needs. Given that decades of experience in the hobby has shown that belly heat works, I swear I don’t understand the antipathy toward it from some quarters.
Lol and this, students, is precisely why we always see all the snakes lounging around out in the sun all summer long. Wait, what do you mean, they’re active at dusk and dawn? At night? Impossible. How are they getting heat at night?