Update

[Freakonaleash]

OK all, its been a few days since i posted, so im going to give a complete rundown of my setup and what not to see if im doing this correctly.
i bought an adult python from a pet store. I have had it a little over one week now. its a male, and a little over three feet long (i previously said it was between two and a half and three feet, i was wrong, i havent been able to get a real accurate measurement but i saw it stretched along the entire length of the aquarium which is three feet and he still had more body length.)

I am using a 50 gallon aquarium, fir bark substrate, three cardboard hide boxes (until i find the time to make some better ones out of wood), two pieces of treated driftwood for him to climb around on. I have two indoor/outdoor digital thermometers and one of them also checks the humidity. I have the probes buried all the way down the substrate on both sides, pushed against the glass. The hot side is at a stable temp of between 90 and 95, and the cool side 80-85. I am using a UTH (50 gallon) to heat the tank. I was able to fix the temperature fluctuation temporarily (until i can get a hold of a dimmer/rheostat or something) by raising the warm side of the tank up by adding CD cases to the corners. slowly adding more cases i finally got to 5 cases on both sides of the hot end of the tank. since then the temps seem to be completely stable. The humidity i have yet to see dip below 60 and im not even misting, i just have a large water bowl in there.

the snake seems extremely shy/scared/stressed . It hasent come out of its hidebox (on the hot side) for three straight days and nights now. is this normal during the "acclimation stage" ? my girlfriend said she heard it "wheezing" one night, this is a sign of a respiratory infection. i have yet to hear it though. if the snake does indeed have a respiratory infection, will it be a constant wheezing, or can it actually come and go? and what can i do to make the snake more comfortable in the event it does have an infection? it is wednesday now, i cant take the snake to the vet til friday, so what can i do to make a snake with a respiratory infection more comfortable in the mean time?

thanks for listening to my rambling all. and thanks for any help/advice

[sapphire_moon]

well if the snake is wheezing try to keep the temps to around 95-96 degrees.

Check to see if there are bubbles coming out of the nose/mouth. Ball pythons are head shy, so try to leave his head alone. And yes, ball pythons do stress VERY easily.

If he's only 3ft I doubt he's fully grown. As MOST (not all i'm sure) bp's usually get more around 4-5ft.


Ball pythons are nocturnal, and you probably won't see it during the day.
They are not great display snakes. And can/will usually hide at night to!

The rest of the setup sounds fine. There are lamp dimmers at wal-mart that you can plug in, then you plug in the UTH to the back of the one plugged into the wal.

[Freakonaleash]

no there are no bubbles coming out of the nose or mouth at all, so i guess thats a good sign. just to be sure tho, like i said, im taking him to the vet friday.
i dont mind the fact that the snake is nocturnal. im usually awake til 2 or 3 in the a.m. anyways, so i have seen him out and about in his aquarium quite a few times. just not in the past 3-4 days he hasent come out at all.
and about the dimmer, i have been allthrough wal-mart, k-mart, home depot, sears hardware, all those stores to try and find a simple plug in dimmer, but i havent had any success, all i was able to find were a few on the internet that looked like they would be ideal. but i dont like to order stuff off the internet. so im kinda stuck with my current set up at the moment. but thanks for the reply and the warning sign of a RI