Welcome!
I started by taking care of a friend's ball python, then I rescued a corn (he's in the pic, RIP 2002) and from there moved into the wonderful world of boas!

Boas just need more heat, more humidity and as you said, more room!
Need to have a warm end at 90 and night cool end at about 75, you don't want the temps to drop below 70 or so. (and NO hibernation/brumation for boas!) Keep your humidity around 60% or higher and you should do fine. Tank size depends on the snake, I start mine out in smaller cages and move them up eventually into 4x2 boaphiles as adults, none of my boas are over 8'.

As far as small size boas, well, there aren't any boas that are guaranteed to stay a small size, but as others have mentioned the island boas (such as hog isle, one of my favs) do tend to stay around the 5-6', males are almost always smaller than females.

Deff get some good boa books, I like the boa manual, captive husbandry of boas and pythons, and of course good web sites like Gus! (ps, if you want a nice island boa, check with Gus)

I'm not sure about the show, but based on my past experience you should be able to get a nice normal colombian boa for about $60-100. I don't know what hog isles go for but typically a little more, say around $100-150?

Biggest diff between the two is their size of course...





Whenever I take out any of the 'big guys' 6'+ I make sure someone else is in the house and knows what I am doing... just in case! So that if and when this happens... I can have some help to get the big snake off haha

actually that was a bite from a small 5' female.
It wasn't as bad as it looks.

Nothing quite as impressive as a nice large normal boa...
I love them, they are Best Of All!



good luck with whatever you decide!
-April

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