I recently learned watching YouTube video that if you can’t have a dedicated reptile room, a living room is a popular place to put your snake, which is my case right now. However, if you have air conditioning in there, the noise from the air conditioning as well as watching TV could stress out the snake.
I had my AC on all day today when I was out. I used my temperature gun and the tank was 68.5°F. I have not set it up with my lights or anything yet (will do tomorrow, getting my MBK this weekend), but I’m worried that it still might be too cold if I have the AC on all day so that my apartment is cool enough for me. I’m thinking to possibly put my snake in my bedroom. It’s on the other side of the wall of the living room and I open my door to let some of the cool air in, but it’s not by a whole lot. The temperature in my bedroom was about 74°F after I got home.
I usually keep my bedroom door closed when I go to bed and have a tall oscillating fan going to keep me cool enough at night. My temperature gun currently reads ~78°F now due to the heatwave I’m going through on the east coast of the USA.
The only other option I can think of is a decent sized coat closet in my living room that’s next to a back door leading to the yard. It’s big enough to fit my 36”×18”×18” tank and the table it sits on. I would keep the door partially open to let in air and to help eliminate the AC and TV noise. The closet is in the corner of the same wall where the tank is now, and the AC is across from that wall (livingroom is ~400 sq ft).
I live in a 1 bedroom single floor in-law apartment that’s attached to my landlord’s house, so I have limited options regarding space. Any ideas and encouragement is welcome. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this!
If you’re turning up the volume for the real movie theatre experience when at home, then absolutely. That can stress them out. Or really good surround sound or sound bars with subwoofers. It is true that busy rooms and sound can stress them out, but the vibration is what can affect them more. A quieter room is best.
Air conditioners can be irritating to them with the sound/vibration. The most important thing is the draft. The same reasons you don’t want your reptiles by a window. The drafts or heat can definitely cause issues with the temps in the enclosure. You would want to keep the enclosure in an area away from them so the balance is easier to maintain a constant with.
Over time you can consider moving the enclosure once you understand your snake’s behavior. That way you can see if they’re really stressed and may need a different space. Over time they will adapt to the sounds in the area though and get used to hearing you about or the AC running. The television noises can be the only real variable since we watch such a variety of things.
This is so off-topic that maybe I should keep it to myself, but someone once told me their rosy boa would only eat if their vacuum cleaner was running near the enclosure.
Must be. And I guess it’s emulating something in instinctive memory, if that even exists. Maybe the rosy’s wild ancestors lived near a forceful waterfall for a thousand generations.
I’ve used AC units for cooling reptile rooms for the past decade. I haven’t noticed the vibrations of the unit being overly stressful for the snakes, they get used to the vibrations after awhile. When it’s first introduced, it might make them a bit nervous, but usually they calm right down. The bigger source of vibrational stress I have seen is the new space heater I got last year to replace the one that clunked. I got a boxed one with a fan because those are stronger heaters, and I did notice more striking from that, no response at all to my AC unit. But the building they’re in is a bit more conducive to floor vibrations than normal and that’s probably why.
Y’know, it makes sense though! I noticed my picky eaters came around a lot faster when I had my phone at max volume watching videos on the floor and the tubs touching the ground. Like snakes that hadn’t taken their first meal suddenly took f/t. I thought it was a coincidence but maybe there’s something to that.
Good for you, @serpentsummer, for wanting to do right by your soon-to-arrive snake. In my experience they can and do adjust to living in a normal human habitat. If you have somewhere that the snake can initially be which is less disruptive, you and the animal can become accustomed to one another and you’ll be better able to tell if it’s unduly stressed when moved to the living room. I don’t work with MBKs so I haven’t anything to say about temps or about them specifically, but I’ve had a number of species in a variety of environs. Some individuals stay skittish but most adjust when given a chance and a caring eye.
