Reptile & Amphibian Forums

how warm is your water bowl? i am thinking if moving my water bowl over to the hot side and my hot hide next to it. both snakes keep checking out the water bowl like they want to go in but turn away at the last second. i know they like to soak because they were soaking at the pet store when i bought them.
thanks
Mike

Question...........did they have hides in the tanks at the pet store? If not they may have been using the water bowl as a hide. Yes, I realize it's not a real hide but they will search out some place that is tight fitting to make them feel more secure. Are they using the hides you have for them?

Quig
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Don't interupt me when I'm talkin' to myself

i think there were hides at the pet store but I'm not sure, i do know that out of the three hides i had when i first got the snakes one of them went directly into the water hide. he doesn't do that anymore tho. i have two other hides. but both snakes use the cool side hide almost exclusively.
thanks
Mike

Hate to say it, but very often a snake that seems to want to spend a lot of time soaking in his water bowl is being bothered by mites. The fact that you saw the snake soaking in a pet store makes this particularly likely (many pet stores make little or no effort toward mite control-many are even unaware of mites or what they are!)....
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

i checked them both very carefully for mites and didn't find any. plus my snake hasn't really soaked since the first day. I'm just concerned that he might want to and I'm not providing the right conditions. of course given my snakes preference for colder temps I'm not sure what that might be.
thanks
mike

Pet stores are notorious for dehydrated, improperly cared for, stressed out snakes so don't try to imitate the set up or expect a well cared for snake to act the way it did in the pet store. Most ball pythons will not soak unless there is something bothering them. I would recommend you put the water dish on the cool side or in between - you don't want to have warm water as that will build up harmful bacteria your snakes will drink.

Perhaps instead of all the questions you can post a picture of your set up and we can go from there with suggestions. There are a lot of knowledgeable, helpful people on this forum - but they do have a low tolerance for people that ask a bunch of questions that should have been researched and answered before the purchase.
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Tosha
JET Pythons

yeah, sorry about all the posts but reading through the forum guide there is a minimum number of posts b4 you can upload pictures. didn't expect this thread to go on so long srry.
thanks for the info tho
Mike

you can add an image url at the bottom without meeting a certain amount of posts.

k tks