Substrate and ambient temperature questions

[TMacie]

Hi All,
The fiance and I just brought home our new ball friend this weekend from the New England Reptile show. His name is Spot. This is our fist BP, we have a baby corn as well.
My question has to do with substrate and ambient temps. He is in a 48Wx24Dx18H wooden viv that we built. It is sealed inside and out, has a plexiglass front which is also the door.
We are using cypress mulch as substrate. I have 11" flexwatt under plexiglass for heat. This is one strip wide and goes the depth of the viv (11x24). This is just about 1/4 of the viv. I have a Alife thermostat controling the flexwatt, the sensor is secured to the plexiglass right in the center of its area. The temp there is 91, 88 around the edges of the plexi. We have about 1" of cypress on top of the heater setup. The substrate itself right on top of the heater is only measuring about 77. The substrate measures 68ish on the cold side.
Is this an issue? If so, any suggestion on how to fix it?
Also, ambient temps in the viv are about 68 as well. Is this an issue? Any suggestion on fixing that too?
As a note, I think these temps are too low, but I want to hear what people have to say and their solutions.

On a better note, with the cypress we are having no issues with humidity!

Thanks,
Travis

[mykee]

Yes, it is an issue.
That's the problem with using a loose substrate (among others, impaction being a far more serious one) and It's why I use paper towel and unprinted newspaper stock for all of my ball pythons.
How do you fix it: change your loose substrate to paper towel or unprinted newspaper stock. May not be pretty to look at but it is really all about the ball python and meeting it's husbandry requirements as well as safety, right?

68 ambient is also a HUGE issue; that's dangerously low. You need that up around 80 immediately.
That's a respiratory infection waiting to happen.
Add additional heat; move the box to a warmer room, add a ceramic heat emitter (whole set of humidity issues there though)...
Ahhh, the joys of putting the cart before the horse.
Good luck.

[Ch^4]

IF it's a baby ball, you might want to move it to a smaller home as they can be stressed being housed in such a large environment.

[Lankyrob]

We put our baby straight into a four foot viv, just ensure that there are LOTS of hidey places for it and it should be ok. Our guy probably has 80% or more of the floor space covered in palces to hide.

We use a ceramic heat emitter, have no problem with humidity levels, and use repti bark as substrate. We spray the bark once a day and have a small shallow waterbowl under the ceramic. Humidity never drops below 55% and when we spray it will go up to about 70% (depending how liberally we spray).

I totally agree with mykee that the temps are currently way too low for ambient tmeperature.

[Gungirl]

Hey guys.. Im Kat Travis's fiance. I have put a heater in the room for now to bring up the air temps. ( its at 75 now) We are looking into getting a heat panel to better solve the temp issue. Our Ba;; spot is about 20" long and he does have 4 different hides plus a few vines for ground cover that he seems to love to be in. I don't feel like the size of the viv is bothering him at all. We just want to get his air temps right! His humidity is sitting nicely around 60% when I looked in on him this morning.

Thanks
Kat

[Lankyrob]

Sounds like you are on the right track, let us know how it goes.

[mistersprinkles]

Sounds good. I would not feed the snake until you have the temps right and they've been right for a couple of days. Remember it needs to have its recommended range from hot to cool so it can change its body temperature and that the hiding spots are spread out from the hot area to the cool one also. 75 is still not that warm for a ball python. If a reptile needs 80 ambient-- that doesn't mean the whole room needs to be 80. You don't have to suffer in a warm room. It just means the cage needs to be 80 ambient- so the cool spot would be 80 while the warm spot would be (I don't remember :D because it's been 15 years I think it's 90 something). Ball pythons hate light of any and all kinds unless it's red which they don't seem to be able to see. They seem to get annoyed if there is bright light even if they're hiding so I always either used the red bulbs or the ceramic heat emitters after I figured that out. You wouldn't need those in a rack type setup but you can't really control the air temp in a bigger cage without them..

[Jendee]

I think the heater in the room is great, I have a space heater as well just to keep my whole reptile room at a nice toasty 80 :D and my snakes are on paper, like mkyee says its definitly not pretty but it gets the job done!! If you want to use a substrate..Ive bounced back in fourth from aspen to paper, make sure its a thin layer so it doesnt absorb all the heat;)