Posted by:
FR
at Sun Aug 14 11:48:57 2011 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FR ]
Hi Dan,
You are doing what suits you. which is fine, but its not about the animal, its about you. Your requirements
You see, most likely you picked these kind of snakes because they could be kept with minimum effort. You know, your busy and do not have time for daily care.
And yes you can keep them that way. But thats not about those snakes. Its your requirements.
How reptiles and in this case kingsnakes can compete with mammals is, they have the ability to exsist and survive in poor conditions, that is, they can lower their metabolism and outlast mammals.
Which is what we are taught in school. Unfortunately, school forgot to teach us that reptiles can also speed up their metabolism and perform much like mammals and birds(even higher metabolism then mammals) and they do for short periods.
So I ask you, you do not have much time, but you have several species and most likely several individuals of each species. Why not have fewer individuals and support their abilities to their potential. This is just something to think about.
Or take a couple individual snakes and support them better. Usually once you see what they are capable of, you have a hard time not supporting that. As its fun.
The point is, you have options, and you surely do not have to jump in head over heals. Start slow and have fun learning.
About your temps. room temps are fine. The higher the base temps are, the more energy is required to maintain that level of metabolism. During the times they need energy, they would stay in the higher temp areas anyway. As Bluerosy mentioned, information to help you would require actually knowing more about your particular situation.
About heat, kingsnakes only require a very small hot spots. There are many many ways to accomplish that. What exactly you do is based on what kind of cages you have. AND other conditions.
For instance, UTH's would not be good for plastic cages. But ok for glass cages. The only problem there is they are not designed properly. They need to me smaller and not heat up some much cage space. A friend of mine uses small lites, 7 to 15 watt, outside of the cages in one corner and it works really well. again, its not a hard problem to solve. but the exact method would be particular to your setup.
Good luck
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RE: ?'s for FR and Bluerosy - FR, Sun Aug 14 11:48:57 2011