new snake owner w/ LOTS o' questions

[mrsmiawllc]

Hi all,

We are a new snake owning family. We adopted two 5 month old rat snakes. They came in a regular ol' glass aquarium with aspen shavings for substrate, a hiding rock, a water bowl, pinkies, and the previous owner provided her heating, which is just an old heating pad she placed under the tank.

I've been poking around your forums all night but have a couple of follow up questions.........

1) They are about a foot long each. We fed them 1 day pinkies last night which they both just GOBBLED right up in less than a minute. The previous owners fed them weekly and I'm thinking maybe for now we need to feed them more like every 4-5 days? Thoughts?

2) On that note, one of them did the funniest thing.....after he ate, I went to put him back in his regular cage (yes, now after reading I don't think we're going to transfer for meals anymore) and he put his nose right on my finger and then opened up his mouth.....kind of like a bite in slo mo. Then when he was back in his enclosure, he did the same thing to himself. From reading, it sounds like he was just in feeding mode and acting a little crazy?

3) So, I'm thinking we probably should just feed in their main home, but I see lots of people worrying about getting substrate on the food. What happens if they ingest that? I've seen a lot of other forums that state things to the effect of "they get dirt on their food in the wild, they can handle it" which kind of makes sense to me. But tell me why/if I should really be worried about substrate on food for these guys.

4) Side note on that, it looks like if we DO move them to eat, the good idea would be to leave them in the feeding enclosure for a few hours, yes? Not move them right away??

5) BETTER HEATING! Clearly, we need that. What to use for now while we get settled and start looking into better enclosures?


Thanks........I'm sure I'll have more questions over time. But, by way of introduction, here are my starters. I've already learned a lot here, looking forward to learning more!