Hello from PA

[Adam87]

Hey everyone, I just found this forum while searching the web for snake info and it seemed really cool. My name is Adam, I'm 24, and I've had my Ball Python Loki for about 3 years now. He's a het hypo and is about 3 feet long. I know it is not the appropriate place to ask the question, but I figured that I would go ahead and include the reason that I found this forum in my introduction. The past 2 bowel movements that Loki has had were slightly abnormal but I can't seem to find anything online that looks like what I saw. His feces were mostly normal (there was a small amount of liquid and also a bit of yellow/white feces) but the brown part seemed to have a, "fuzz", I guess would be a way to describe it. Is this a bad sign or is it a fairly common thing? His past feces have been mostly solid with a bit of white but were always pretty smooth in texture.

[infernalis]

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[Lankyrob]

Welcome - have you changed his diet at all? Also a quick rundown of his home with temps/humidity and what have you can help with us providing you with some answers.

[stephanbakir]

Welcome to the forums.

[Coffee Black]

Welcome! I've never personally seen what you are talking about but have seen pictures of the furry poo devil. Every time i have seen it posted it has been in a " Wow! Look at this! type of way. " Have you switched to Rats from mice or possibly a larger food item ? I've heard that the whole animal is not always fully digested. Especially things like fur and nails/claws.

[stephanbakir]

Picture would be great, My understanding is that the black/brown part is poo and the white part is urine? I've never heard of what coffee described.
Are you curtain it was poo and not regurge? they can sometimes look similar.

[marvelfreak]

Hello and welcome! It sound to me like regurgitation. the white part would be dissolved bones. Could be if your temps aren't high enough that it regurgitated before it was completely digested. My BRB did this and it look like poop with fur. It had not digested the fur and skin. Upping your temps should help.

[Sissy]

Hello. I just registered, and saw this little notification about posting in the intro section etc...

My name is sissy, and I also live in PA. I joined the forum in an attempt to gain information on properly caring for our newest addition, which I have no experience with.

After work yesterday my husband went to help friends of ours move, and was presented with the question, "Dude, can you find someone who can take my scorpion?"

So, now I have this beautiful, female from what I can tell, Emperor Scorpion.
She is approximately 3 and a half inches in length, so I am guessing by the information acquired during my fact checking, that she is still a juvenile.

I have many general questions, and some concerns that I will likely be taking to the Invertebrates forum.

This boards lay out is very familiar to me, so it seems easy enough to navigate through, thanks. :)

[marvelfreak]

Hello. I just registered, and saw this little notification about posting in the intro section etc...

My name is sissy, and I also live in PA. I joined the forum in an attempt to gain information on properly caring for our newest addition, which I have no experience with.

After work yesterday my husband went to help friends of ours move, and was presented with the question, "Dude, can you find someone who can take my scorpion?"

So, now I have this beautiful, female from what I can tell, Emperor Scorpion.
She is approximately 3 and a half inches in length, so I am guessing by the information acquired during my fact checking, that she is still a juvenile.

I have many general questions, and some concerns that I will likely be taking to the Invertebrates forum.

This boards lay out is very familiar to me, so it seems easy enough to navigate through, thanks. :)
Wish i could help you, but i don't know anything about them. But know someone who does. Willow783 on here has or use to have them plus there are a couple others. You could send her a PM.

[Will0W783]

Sissy, I'll be PM-ing you so as not to hijack this thread.

Adam87, first of all welcome to the forum. I hope you enjoy your time here and find some useful information. This forum has some really experienced and helpful people and we have a good time. :)

The first question I must ask is: how soon after he poops do you remove the waste? Depending on the humidity level in your enclosure, if the poop is left in the cage it may mold. I have had this happen when I was away on vacation and had a friend watch my snakes. She didn't remove the poop one of my boas made and it was fuzzy with mold when I got home.

Secondly, snakes cannot digest the fur and toenails of the prey items they eat. It is possible that, depending on how the stool formed, the fuzz you see is the fur that was on the prey item.

If the brown part of the stool is still relatively solid and well-formed, I would not be terribly concerned. If it happens again, try to get a picture and we can help you out more.

[Adam87]

Hey everyone thanks for the welcomes and all of the responses. As far as all your questions go I guess I will start with the temps and humidity. Right now his temps range from low 70's to mid 80's. It gets kind of chili in the mornings at my house (maybe around mid 60's) but it usually warm by around midday. I do have a heat lamp that I turn on for him at night and throughout the day if the inside temp is below 75. Usually, though I will have my windows open and it is around 75-80 throughout the day and even when the ac is on the temp doesn't usually go below 78. I llive in a pretty humid area so humidity is usually always between 80-90% except during the winter when it drops down to around 65-75%.

I haven't changed his diet recently. The only change has been that I switched over to frozen mice instead of live about a year and a half ago. He eats about 1 mouse a week. Sometimes if I miss a week he get's two for the week without. It's actually funny because it has taken him this long to realize that the mice are not struggling nearly as much. He still grabs them off the tongs and tries to squeeze them to death before he eats them. It's amazing what a little warm water can do :-P.

I could be wrong, but I do not think that it is regurge. He has never regurgitated before except in one instance when he had a rat, but I switched him back over to mice after that an it has been probably six months since then. I would think that even two mice would not be too much for him to digest at his size. As I said about 3 feet. Two mice barely even makes a noticeable lump in his stomach. He could probably handle a small rat now but I don't ever want to find anything like that again. It was horrible... smelled so bad. That is what makes me think that it is just poop. There is no abnormal smell which is what I encountered when he regurgitated after a few days.

I usually make it a point to try to check on him within a week of eating to make sure that there is no poop under his hide. I would say that I usually find it within a few days to a week at the very most. Usually I see him sitting outside of his hide looking at something underneath and he seems unsure about what to do but knows that he doesn't want to be inside there with it. I'll clean it and then he heads back into his hide to hang out.

From what you guys are telling me I guess the best thing to do is just keep an eye on it and I'll post a pic if this continues to happen. In the mean time I'll try to put up a few pics of Loki for you guys to see. He is a very pretty snake. But he is kind of shy. Very timid. Unless you have food for him... then it's down to business.

Thanks again for all your feedback and questions. Let me know if you guys can suggest anything else that I should be doing to better take care of him. He is my first snake and I want to make sure that I am caring for him as best as I can. I'm really glad that I found this forum and a group of people that think these creatures are as fascinating as me :-)

[Lankyrob]

Your temps are too low for him to digest. BP's need a hotend temp of 88-91f and without proper temperatures snakes cant digest their food and will regurge it (or not take it in the first place).

Bump up your hot end temps - leave him 7 days or so then try him again. You also want to switch him to rats as soon as you can as when he is adult he could be taking 8 or so mice where 2 rats would do the job.

[Will0W783]

Yep, what Rob said. Those temperatures are WAAAYYY too low. Not only will your snake not eat with those temps, but he will develop respiratory infections if you continue to keep him in those conditions. RI can be fatal to snakes, and are at the very least not cheap to treat.

[Adam87]

I was kind of worried that you guys would say that. I've been doing some research on the forum on how to get temps up. His tank is only about 10-15 gal. Do you guys think that the best way to heat it evenly is with an under tank heater? During the summer I am going to try to build him a wood enclosure which I can customize the heat set up, but for now any suggestions on best way would be appreciated. If not UTH, what wattage heat lamp would be best to use? Also, I was looking at Zilla Terrarium Hygrometer Therm. Should I put one on each side of the cage?

As far as rats go, how often should I be giving them to him? 1 every other week or so? The problem with giving him rats is that I can't seem to find anywhere that has frozen rats and the live rats that I find are usually too big for him. You guys know anywhere online I can find midsized frozen rats?

[Lankyrob]

Not sure where you can get rats from but in terms of feeding my BP gets his every 14 days - they dont move much so dont need lots of food or they will easily get fat.

[marionsclan]

Hi Adam,

Try your local Petco or Petsmart for frozen mice and rats. They have a variety of them. Also, you can go on Craig's list and see if any breeders are advertising. Most of them will kill them for you so you can freeze them or feed right away.

And last but not least her is an online seller of frozen rats and mice: Colorado Frozen Feeders, Organic Snake Food - Mice and Rats (http://www.coloradofrozenfeeders.com/) It says Colorado but they ship nation wide.

Good luck!

[Adam87]

Thanks marionsclan I'll have to check that out. I upped the temps and his last "movement" was normal. That seemed to have done the trick. I really need to get a new thermometer/thermostat so that I can regulate the temperature a little more easily. UTH and 75W lamp is just a bit too low (around 89) on warm side and the ceramic lamp that I have gets a little too warm (about 93). Just can't seem to find the perfect balance. I've been resorting to turning the ceramic lamp on and off as needed....

[stephanbakir]

Pet stores here sell frozen rats 4$ ea =/ whats the price over there?

[Lankyrob]

Thanks marionsclan I'll have to check that out. I upped the temps and his last "movement" was normal. That seemed to have done the trick. I really need to get a new thermometer/thermostat so that I can regulate the temperature a little more easily. UTH and 75W lamp is just a bit too low (around 89) on warm side and the ceramic lamp that I have gets a little too warm (about 93). Just can't seem to find the perfect balance. I've been resorting to turning the ceramic lamp on and off as needed....


You DEFINITELY need a thermostat if you are using a Ceramic bulb - i take it that you have the bulb guarded as well so thatt there is no chance of the snake touching the bulb? If not then DO NO use the bulb until it is safe - they easily reach 500f surface temperature and can easily kill the snake - they are perfectly safe used properly (all my seven snakes have them) but they MUST be safe.

[Will0W783]

Yep, thermostat is the way to go. I don't know where you are located Adam87, but there's a great pet store in Lancaster called That Pet Place. They sell a thermostat/hygrometer for about $30. I have one and it works quite well. Most of my stuff is on the type that run multiple cages, but I got the single-cage one in a trade, and since saw it at TPP.

[Adam87]

Pet stores here sell frozen rats 4$ ea =/ whats the price over there?

I haven't yet found a pet store that sells frozen rats but mice run about 2 bucks a pop.

You DEFINITELY need a thermostat if you are using a Ceramic bulb - i take it that you have the bulb guarded as well so thatt there is no chance of the snake touching the bulb? If not then DO NO use the bulb until it is safe - they easily reach 500f surface temperature and can easily kill the snake - they are perfectly safe used properly (all my seven snakes have them) but they MUST be safe.

I've actually switched back over to the UTH and 75w heat lamp. I think that I just need to get a higher wattage heat bulb because the ceramic one is making the cage too warm. I'm going to get a thermostat this weekend so I will probably switch back to the ceramic afterward.

Yep, thermostat is the way to go. I don't know where you are located Adam87, but there's a great pet store in Lancaster called That Pet Place. They sell a thermostat/hygrometer for about $30. I have one and it works quite well. Most of my stuff is on the type that run multiple cages, but I got the single-cage one in a trade, and since saw it at TPP.

I live about an hour away from Lancaster so I don't know if it's worth the gas to drive up there. What brand is it? Is it something I could find online?

[Will0W783]

Come to the reptile shows. There's one in Hamburg, PA...up by Reading, that is held every two months. There is also one that alternates between Reading and Oaks, PA. That one is usually held every other month or so as well.
If you don't mind a drive..there's a good little show in Havre de Grace, MD. It's about an hour and a half from Lancaster.

Finally, if you PM me, I can give you the name and phone number of my supplier. He lives in Lancaster.