Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all my name is Dave. I have never owned a snake, but I would very much like to, I am very interested in starting out with a king snake. I have a question on providing proper temps. It seems like the best way to go is to use heating pads and my question is, do you only need to place a heating pad at one end of the cage and heat it up to a temp. somewhere in between 77F-86F, depending on what works best for the snake? what type of set up do you all use? Take care and best of luck, thanks for everything!
sincerely,
Dave

UTH or an Under Tank Heater, heat pad, is the way to go with terrestrial colubrids like Kingsnakes. I would recommend using a dimmer at the least, or a thermostat is even better to control the substrate temp. Depending on who you talk to, some of us use a large thermal gradient from 100 on the high end to the mid 70's on the low end, but this requires a larger encloser. Mid 80's on the high end to mid 70's on the low end should work fine for most Kings. Good luck and I think starting with Kings is a smart move.
-Phil

Thanks so much for the advice, so I apologize for my ignorance in these matters, are you able to heat different parts of the pad to different temperatures at the same time, or can you only heat the pad to one temperature at a time? Thanks for everything, take care and best of luck!
Sincerely,
Dave

One pad, one temp Using the appropriately sized pad for the tank you get should keep you set, also invest in a couple of temperature probes, one for each side of the tank. Gives you an idea of the temperatures in the tank, and if it's too warm, just turn off/unplug the pad. 'Round here it's hitting 85 in the house during the day (yay california) and according to my temperature probes it's only dropping to about 70 in the tank at night, so right now I'm not using any heating.

As long as you have a warm side and a cool side your snake will decide what temperature it wants to be at and move accordingly. It's nice and simple, actually

~jenny
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1.2 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, and Periscope)
0.0.1 california kingsnake (Tetris)
0.2 rescue chinese water dragons
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
1.0 gerbil (Yerbul)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
1.1 betta fishes (Vicious and Killer)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
2.0 horses (Buddy and Sam)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
1.25 chickens (Ugly the rooster and his harem)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

Following this thread... my son got a Cali King Snake about 4 weeks ago, and he's been very good about researching and browsing these forums as well ... we are waiting for a book we ordered to arrive. However, two questions we can't find clear answers to: 1) speaking of temperature, if we have a heating pad, do we really need a light? My son insisted on getting a UVB light for the day, and then we have a red (infrared?) light on at night, but it doesn't seem - from what I've read - that Theo needs these. We do, however, live in Maine, and the house gets pretty darn cold in the winter, esp. when we are not around. The temp is hovering around 82 but I think we need a better gauging system, and we are working on that. (We also have a large shelter at the warm end, near the light, and added a smaller shelter at the cool end, where he seemed to hang out quite a bit. Can't say he's using that shelter much, however.)

2) Theo is only about 14"-15" long, pretty young I guess, and wolfs down one pinkie (thawed) a week with gusto. It SEEMS to me that he becomes more lively/animated/anxious (?) towards the end of the week (we feed on Saturday)... he eats quickly and easily. Does he need two a week? How do we know when to do that, and/or when to go to the fuzzies (one a week, I presume, for a while?) instead?

Thanks so much! Oh, also, is "brumating" something you only worry about if you are a breeder? Thanks again,this is a great site.

Since you live in an area where it gets rather cold in winter, I'd go with the heat lamp in addition to the pad, only turning on the lamp when things get chilly though. Make sure you put in a nice thick layer of substrate - they LOVE burrowing, and a couple different substrates that work great for this are aspen and a lovely thing called EcoEarth (compressed coconut ... husks I think). The catch with ecoearth is you have to make sure it's not too wet when you put it in. You want it to be nice and dry and crumbly, and what works for me is I just keep the area under the water bowl wet (gonna get wet anyway, right?) so that he has a place to go should he want to get cool and damp without getting wet (like when he's going into shed).

You might actually be able to bump Theo up to fuzzies. Mine (Tetris) is about as long as Theo, and he chows down fuzzies without a hitch. If you're worried about the fuzzies being too big (more than 1.5 times the biggest part of his body), try giving Theo a pinkie every five days instead of seven. If you do try fuzzies, be prepared for the first time to take a while, and for it to take longer to digest.

Temperature - as long as you can get one side to be about 85 degrees, maybe even 90 (depending on how big your tank is), then the rest of the tank will gradually cool down to about room temperature. If you have a small tank (10 gallon), aim for 85 on the hot side, because if it gets too much hotter the whole tank heats up above the snake's comfort level. Measure the temperature about an inch above the substrate (snake level) and if it's still low then turn on the heat lamp for a few hours in the morning. At night things can drop to 65, but only as long as he has those nice toasty warm hours from morning to about midafternoon.

Brumating is essentially hibernation, and as long as you keep your king warm you don't have to worry about it. It triggers breeding once they come out of it.

Hope that helps!

~jenny
-----
1.2 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, and Periscope)
0.0.1 california kingsnake (Tetris)
0.2 rescue chinese water dragons
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
1.0 gerbil (Yerbul)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
1.1 betta fishes (Vicious and Killer)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
2.0 horses (Buddy and Sam)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
1.25 chickens (Ugly the rooster and his harem)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

Thanks, Jenny, so much - that is incredibly helpful... we do have a 20 gallon tank, and our thermometer (now stuck to the wall) is too high, we need to get one lower. We were going to take it down (and put move it down) but Theo loves to reach all the way up to it and coil himself around it - kind of amazing to watch. we'll get another one and leave that one as a toy.

We'll also try the pinkies every 5 days thing and see how that goes.

thanks again, very much!