New blood

[Pythonian]

I brought back my old blood today and Ray was gracious enough to give me another one who looks to be in alot better condition. I don't know the sex yet, i want to establish it first, and it have it's first meal here before i start asking questions.
Ray gave me a little shoebox with some mulch in it to keep it until it gets 100% healthy and ready to move into another enclosure. I put the heat rock underneath the shoebox and a light on top of it. that should make for excellent heat. I don' tknow if the heat from the lamp will melt the top of the shoebox, so i'm keeping a very close eye on it for the next 3 hours just to make sure. The skin on this blood is tighter, it looks fatter and isn't lethargic. I think it will be fine :) Thank you for ur help everybody

Mike

[Pythonian]

Heyall,
Since my other blood is sick i drove for 2 hours to Ben Siegel's place and got a gorgeous blood! . So now i have 2 bloods. I've decided to keep the old one and try and bring her back to eating with the best husbandry i can give her. I figure if everything is perfect she has no excuse not to eat! and i haven't tried to feed the one from Ben yet. I'm letting that one sit for a few days. I'll get some pics up abour monday. It's only been a day since it's been in the cage. Let it rest first :)

Mike

[Grant vg]

Congrats! Good decision :D

[sSNAKESs.com]

Ummmm your husbandry needs alot of work if you want to bring that other blood back up to par... Temps need to be measured, a heat rock is a BAD way to under heat the tupperware and the lamp on top isnt needed if you keep the undertank heater at the right temperature. Get a human heating pad if you cant get a under tank heater and make the hotspot 88 - 92 on 1/3 of the cage. Keep the bloods seperate, nowhere near each other. Wash your hands before and after interacting with them, you dont want to handle the sick one then handle the CBB baby without washing your hands. Other then that.. congrats! :)

[Pythonian]

Right now i am really pressed for cash. I can't afford a heating pending right now. I am really in the hole a lot this month due to all of my snakes with vet bills, 2 new enclosures, and breeding rats. I am using the heat rock for the time being. it heats up the floor to a nice temperature but creates no humitidy. So that is what the lamps do. They put the temperatures higher and create a lot of humidity. Right now one cage is at 89F and the other 91F. My new blood just ate a dead fuzzy in under 20 minutes. In a week or two i will be able to get everything that i need for the ideal enclosure for the bloods. Tomorrow i may be selling my car. So it may be even sooner. I keep the temps right, the humidity right, i have plenty of hides. I wash my hands every single time i even put them in any of my snakes enclosures. and the two bloods. are seperated by a 10G empty aquarium until my enclosure rack is done ( which will be in about 4 days. So far I've done everything that you mentioned except the heatpad, which i am trying to subsititute as best as i can. Personally i think i'm doing a fine job at taking care of all of my animals. Every single one of my snakes are perfectly healthy and doing great other than this blood. I pay very close attention to the husbandry of all of my animals. Thanks for the input.

Mike

[sSNAKESs.com]

Hey Mike, i hope you didnt take what i was saying the wrong way.. I was just pointing out on how you could easily improve on the housing methods that you had described in the post. :D

[Dom]

:)

U do seem to deeply love your animals but I do think some of your husbandry methods do require some refining .. As jeff has said .. Heat rocks are sooooooooo dangerous for your animals .. I beg of you to get him of it .. there are so many other efficient ways of heating up this cage then that death trap - trust me - its only a matter of time till he either injures of kills himself with those heat rocks..

As for the humidity .. so sorry to say but how do u manage on creating humidity with a heat lamp .. it creates heat .. wich can only reduce humidity? U really lost me on that one?

My suggestion is if this is just tremporary, get him a humidity box .. basically a hide wich is damp and almost completly enclosed so that the water that keeps trying to escape is trapped .. this iway it keeps humidity very high in the box . It can be as simple as a plastic rubermaid with a small hole on the side for entry!

Maybe on an other note .. maybe you should of had the cage and proper heating ready for the animal before u had the first one .. and even before u purchased the second ..

.. just looking out for the best welfare of the animals thats it..

Dom

[Pythonian]

Dom: the heat rock isn't INSIDE the enclosure.. it is outside.
the rubbermaid is on top of it. and it does have a humidity "box" kinda. it is a small rubbermaid as it is. so i couldn't find a smaller one. So i took an old flower pot and cut a hole in it, and put spanish moss inside and i spray it twice a day with warm water. also. for the heat lamp issue. Humidity is (basically) warm air that comes from evaporating water. The heat lamp isn't on the rubbermaid about.. 3 or 4 inches above and it heats up the box. Inside the box is very damp as it is cause i misted it twice with water. the water evaporates but the air for some reason doesn't escape from the holes in the top. Plus i live in florida. room temperature is in the 80s with like 80% humidity lol . But yea. All the enclosures were ready for the second animal. The first animal i thought i could create enough humidity in an aquarium. But that didn't work out. Thats the only reason why i changed the enclosure. but the second enclosure was ready 4 hours in advance.

Mike
P.s. Jeff you didn't insult me. It was just confusing. Because you were telling me to do stuff that i already do :-D

[Dom]

Having the heat rock outside the cage is a bit better but still a risk - those things are fire hasards . Just my opinion.. Ive already seen one burn up on in front of me and ever since that day they scar me! Humidity is not necceserly warm air its simply the amount of water in the air .. there is such a thing as cold humidity .. at 100% humididty thats usually when it rains ...

Again .. I see no way a heat lamp can cause the humidity to go up .. unless u were somehow boilling the water in a bowl but if its just heating the cage then all its doing is dryin up the air and lowering the humidity ..

As for you clay pot .. great idea that seems to work great for you!

Best of luck
Dom

[Lisa]

For future consideration you may want to have the enclosures set up before getting the snake. Makes for quicker aclimatization, less stress for the animal and you.

Having a little extra cash set aside for forgotten items or the vet isn't a bad idea either.

[Pythonian]

Lisa.. I know to have the enclosures set up before i get the animal. I honestly thought i could generate enough humiditity in the aquarium. but i couldn't. But you are right i should have checked that before I got the snake.
And surprisingly i did have extra cash. I didn't think the snake was as sick as it was. so the vet bill was higher than usual :(

Dom: Yea i know about the heat rock. I have had plenty of horror stories. It's just staying there for a little longer.

I see my husbandry techniques working on all my other snakes perfectly. So maybe i do know what i'm actually doing. And they aren't so bad after all :-D.. no offense to anybody else.

Mike .

[sSNAKESs.com]

Mike: Don't worry bro, im sure all of your other snakes are doing fine! :) When yu read a post that someone puts up its hard to know what their experience level is with snakes or with a certain species, so all you have to play off is the post and information that they gave you. So we were just trying to help :) Its best when describing a setup to go into full detail, temps etc then people know whats going on more and can help and do less speculation. Heck, i just got a blood a few days ago and i dont know what to do with the enclosure anymore then you do, lol i just got it in a rack at 90 degree hotspot with a large water bowl for now.. I will be adding a hide with damp moss or papertowell if i cant find any moss today :) So were all in this together man! Im glad to hear they are doing great! Take care ;)

[Pythonian]

Yea i guess i didn't describe my enclosures too well :(. I haven't had any experiance prior with bloods. but i work at a starbucks which is in a barnes and noble. SO i have like 12 books on them lol. i have read all but 5 of them. But experiance is better then rule books that's why i value you everybody's input. The thing was. Everybody was telling me to do stuff i was already doing. :p lol Anyway, The only 2 things wrong with what i'm doing with the bloods is the heat rock (which is outside of the rubbermaid and is NO WHERE near hot enough to melt the box. in fact if i was using it for it's original purpose. I'd be complaining like hell. cause this barely gets warm. but when moist paper towels are on top of it. it works alright. also at night. I don't have an infrared light bulb which i need. At night the temperatures drop between 2-4 degrees of what i want it to. and i personally like to keep it a little warmer then what is required. so they are coming soon.
Anyway. It seems the blood that was sick is actually doing a lot better now. It is still sick but it's moving around it's enclosure. and before it wouldn't go near it's food now itlays next to it.
And my new blood downed a fuzzy in under 20 minutes. lol so ihave no problems there. Thanks everybody for your help. and i'm sorry if i got a little defensive. It's just that i felt i was taking heat for stuff i was already doing. and i love these animals so much i would NEVER ever do anything that would put added stress that i didn't think the snake could handle. i haven't had as much experiance as you guys (only about a year and a half maybe 2 years now) But everyday for 2 years i have read up on the current species that i own. So i feel i know a pretty good deal of what i need to know.

Mike

[Pythonian]

In fact when i was spraying the enclosures today i decided to take a few pics to show you how i have it setup. the humid hide is turned upside down so i cna get the moss wet. and that blood that is behind the humid hide is my baby i got from ben siegel.



http://www.printroom.com/_vti_bin/ViewImage.dll?userid=Pythonian&album_id=122504&image_id=4&courtesy=1

mike

[lanalizard]

not a blood owner but looks good to me

[Pythonian]

... does it look good to u? ;)

Mike

[sSNAKESs.com]

lol yep it looks great actually! :D Definatly a miscommunication and confusion in this thread! :D looks great Mike, good job :)

[Pythonian]

Thank You :)


mike

[Linds]

Congrats on your new snakies! :D

[Pythonian]

Thanks. right now they are at 95 degrees and 91% humidity in the enclosure of the sick one. and 82 degrees and 90% humidity on the good one. Does that sound good to everybody? (the 82 degrees is the cool spot and the 95 degrees is the hot spot on two different enclosures.

Mike

[Grant vg]

MIke, at 95 degrees, and 91% humidity they are sure to either get a resp or some kinda scale rot if the substrate is damp. If you continue to keep them at those ranges, they'll get sick very soon.
Especially, if you are in the midst of acclimating them, they are stressed as it is, and too high of temps and crazy humidity wont help them.

Once in a while after a good spraying, my enlosures will hit 95% but thats only for a short period of time and soon drops to 60-70%.

Why have u decided to keep things so high?

[Pythonian]

the good one is 85 cause thats what i figured would be a good temperature. the 95 degree one is the sick one. my vet told me to bump up the temps. but now i'm lowering them a little. 95 isn't good for a hot spot for a sick snake?

Mike

[Pythonian]

i'm gonna bring it down to about 88. tell me what u think about that for the one with the resp.
and keeping the healthy one at 85?

Mike

[Pythonian]

ok i got the temps and everything back to a solid number.
enclosure 1 (sick blood)
Humidity 75%
Temp: 81
enclosure 2 (healthy blood)
Humidity 62%
Temp 80

I've been reading in my books. For a blood with a resp. To lower the humidity and boost the temperature. Now to me this makes sense because it may help clear the water out of him. On the other hand. It may over dry him. What do you all think?

Mike

[Pythonian]

hey .. sorry i post so often .. but the ideal humidity is 65% correct? well i did that and i took my snake out to check on him and his skin was so tight it sounded like i was rustling wrapping paper. it was so dry it was disgusting! so i sprayed him and he sprung to life.
my new one is doing fine tho...could the sick one being retaining a shed?

Mike