Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My GBK is about 2 years old now, about 3 1/2 feet long and very slender. Temperature gradients in her 55 gallon tank are 78 on the cool side and 85-88 on the warm side.

She is my first snake and eats 3-4 decent sized hoppers every week (and will eat anything I show her practically out of my hand), has never regurged and sheds a full skin a couple times a year with the last being two months ago

I've noticed that she doesn't use the warm side of the tank at all, she stays almost exclusively on the cold even just after feeding. She's always been a secretive snake, but does spend time inspecting her domain, climbing things and poking at the corners and being a normal kingsnake.

She has two hides, a cave on the hot side and a terra cotta flower pot on the cold side.

I've switched sides to see if she prefers the hot side being reversed which she still goes to the cold side, switched her hides around to see if she preferred one over the other which she ignores. I've tried removing the hide entirely off the cool side and she just curls up where the hide would usually be.

Dropping the temperature made her sluggish and even more hidebound, raising it has made her more active and willing to snooze wrapped around her water bowl.

I wouldn't be worried, but she's much more slender and skinny than most snakes I see. I've increased her food to as large as she can handle and 4 of those and she's still skinny and ropy (can really see the muscle defined, especially right behind her head).

This could be normal, but I'm just making sure I take as good care of her as possible.

Any suggestions or ideas?

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And since I can't edit, I've also noticed she's started pushing and scraping against the top of the tank. Anybody I ask here just says she's trying to get out and ignore it, but she's scraping up the scales on her neck. I suspect something's off about her environment that needs to be adjusted...
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Answered too fast, sorry, I would think maybe she thinks her habitat is being destroyed and she wants to move. Creature of habit and all that. Again, just my opinion, maybe visuallyinspect for mites. Do you feed live or frozen? Substrate switch recently?
Todd Hughes

Well, first of all, that is a very pretty grayband!!! I think she looks great weight wise and you have done a great job!

IMO, her always going to the cooler end of the cage may simply be just her telling you that she favors the cooler side and that she feels the hot side is too hot. Years ago, I used to have my kings hotter than I do now, which was around 84-85. Now I have all my kings and graybands at appr. 82, and they do fine. I do have the temps drop down to 79-80 sometimes at night. One grayband breeder I purchased my Sanderson Co. male from kept his graybands on average at 78. In my situation, I have my whole room heated, and I have the alterna usually on the higher parts of the room.

Lean and muscular is always better to have your snake at than fat and obese. Everyone I know that has caught graybands in the wild has never found a fat grayband, and their body build is usually that of a leaner snake. If she looks thinner than a lot of kings you have seen pics of, it may be that you are seeing the results of some snakes being fed much more than they should, and if you are accustomed to seeing many pics of that, then when you look at a leaner snake, it may seem strange at first.

Some snakes seem to never gain or build up weight, while others, it seems that one mouse makes them blow up! lol....for instance, my 277 grayband male is always skinny no matter what I feed him while my Pandale Dirt Rd. grayband male is easy to bulk up to an unhealthy weight if I am not careful.

To me, she looks fine. If she eats 4 hoppers a week, and is still lean and not building up fat deposits, then the 55 gallon cage she is in must be the way she is getting exercise, with the spacious amount of room she has.

Try dropping the hot side to perhaps 82-83 and see if there is any changes. I personally feel that 85-88 may be just the reason she is uncomfortable. Other than that, like I said, she looks great!!!!

Take care!
Billy

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Genesis 1:1

Well, put Billy.
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Diego

Diego & Tiffany's Zoo:
SNAKES
2.4.0 Corn Snakes (Different morphs)
1.1.0 Everglades Rat Snakes
2.1.0 Baird's Rat Snake
1.2.0 Trans-Pecos Rat Snake
0.1.0 Amel Pacific Gopher Snake
1.0.0 Het Amel San Diego Gopher Snake
3.1.0 Sonoran Gopher Snake
0.1.0 Amel Sonoran Gopher Snake
1.0.0 Mexican Black Kingsnake
2.1.0 Gray Banded Kingsnakes (1.1 River Road, 1.0 Non-Locale Specific)
0.2.0 California Kingsnakes
0.1.0 Thayeri Kingsnake
0.1.0 Florida Kingsnake
1.1.0 Boa Constrictor
0.1.0 Dumeril's Boa
1.1.0 Rosy Boas (Mexican & Mid Baja)
1.1.0 Kenyan Sand Boas
0.1.0 Indonesian Dwarf Pacific Boa
0.1.0 Tangerine Honduran Milksnake
1.0.0 Honduran Milksnake
1.1.0 Ball Pythons
1.0.0 Woma Python
1.1.0 Cape York Spotted Pythons
1.1.0 Macklot's Pythons
1.1.0 Western Hognose
1.0.0 Blacktail Cribo

LIZARDS
1.0.0 Frilled Dragon
3.1.0 Bearded Dragons (2 Normal, 1 RedXGold, 1 Citrus)
0.1.0 Eastern Collared Lizard
0.1.0 Merauke Blue Tongue Skink
1.3.0 Leopard Geckos
1.0.1 Yellow Niger Uromastyx
1.1.0 Chuckwalla
0.1.0 Banded Gecko

FROGS
2.2.0 Southern Bell Frogs
1.0.1 Green Tree Frogs
1.0.0 Bubbling Kassina
1.1.1 White's Tree Frogs
0.0.2 Gold Frogs

If you have a 3 1/2 ft 2 yr old and can see she is muscular and she hides most times but explores some, I would say you have a healthy snake indeed. If you do not intend to breed her, she is doing fine, IMO.
Todd Hughes
P.S. Stop switching her hides on her, imagine how you would feel if you came home and your house was moved! No bad vibes intended just a suggestion!

>>My GBK is about 2 years old now, about 3 1/2 feet long and very slender.

Most kings don't start to bulk up untill their about 3yrs.old. Great looking snake, looks fine to me.
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R.BICHLER
http://www.webspawner.com/users/rbichler/index.html

I've never had alternas, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd try misting the cage lightly once a week with water. Don't get the substrate wet, just mist the air lightly, and knock back the dust.
Check your thermometer against another. I have 3 digitals.
I had to bring one back to the store because it was way off.
Get a drinking glass, fill it with ice cubes, and use it to check them. Check the cage from top to bottom, every square inch. If the temp exceeds 95F ANYWHERE, it's too hot. If the cold side is below 78F ANYWHERE, it's too cold (Unless you're trying to cool them for winter.).
Also, I've found that if you feed a snake bigger prey items, they tend to like it a little warmer. Try feeding small adult mice instead of hoppers.

The low side temp is a daytime temp, the temps should drop into the mid to low 70s at night.

Thanatos is a very personable and docile girl, but she hates any water other than her quiet bowl and looks at me like I've betrayed her when I accidentally splash anywhere near her direction when cleaning and refilling it. She pouted for nearly a week the last time I had to soak her when she had something stuck to her nose after a stressful move.

She seems to handle 36-40% humidity fairly well, and sheds pretty well at that range with the occasional distasteful bath in her bowl.

The pushing started when I switched her from her 45 gallon that she was raised in from a neonate with a solid lid (she's gotten out twice, being related to houdini) to a 55 gallon tank with more floor space and a clamped screen top bout 6 months ago. The only other things I've changed since I got her is I changed her substrate from aspen shavings to reptile bark and added a large stick and some vining. Adding the climbable items has made her much more active in her attempts to happily destroy it and pull it all down. This seems to be easing off on her pushing at her lid slightly. She used to do it non stop all night long, now she only does it at dusk and dawn and spends the rest of her active time digging herself into the substrate and rooting up the vining wherever possible.

I have no intentions of breeding her and as for the temperature recommendations, those are daytime temperatures. She's under a 100w heating bulb in the days to generate that. I have her under a 75w black light at night as the ambient temperature in my basement drops to 66 degrees outside the tank and she hides if I have it any colder than that at night.

Her being stressed about her environment being destroyed makes sense. It had been changed very little before that and she probably got used to the way things were. The change to this one (a display tank) probably threw her for a loop. Think she'll settle down now that very little is changing again? About all that will be changed in the future is she'll get a few more climbable things to uproot.

I haven't moved her hides around since I got this new tank set up as I know she likes her pot right where it is. She likes to sleep with the tip of her nose poking out of the hole in the top and doze off watching the TV.

I inspected her today when she came out to say hi after holing up for a few days to digest her last meal and the scales are kind of flaking down her neck where she braces against the screening, but there's no open cuts/sore or anything, just flaked scales.

I figure I'll reduce the heat of the hot side a bit, possibly dropping the 100w to a 75 and see how she does. If she still insists the cold side is her house, I'll just have to bow down to snakey logic.

Ahh, she went to a cage with more vertical space, sometimes the tight quarters can be comforting to a snake that usually isn't exposed during daylight.
My guess on why that is is that most of their natural enemies present hazards from directly above, birds of prey, etc.
If they can't see the top, then they feel vulnerable.
The same with tall clear sides.
If they went from a opaque tub to a clear glass aquarium they will spend a lot of time nosing against the glass.
On my eastern box turtle, I taped brown paper bags to the outside of his 70 gallon aquarium on the bottom half of the tank on 3 sides, problem solved.
They know they can be seen from either side, so they spend all of their time in hiding or beating themselves against an invisible barrier.
If the side is opaque and their eyes can focus on it and see it as a natural barrier, they tend to be a bit calmer.
My snakes have all been happier in racks than nice display cases.
Also, hopper mice have lower vitamin content than small adult mice because of their diet and they tend to have more contents in their stomach. A snake this size can digest small adult mice easily if she will accept them, and may benefit from the better food value and vitamin content (Gut load.). As far as that goes, she looks healthy to me.