If you haven't checked it out yet, check out the care sheet on VPI's page. You can probably find a link to their page on the top of this page.
Having said that, let me tell you my care regimen and then you can compare various notes and come up with your own plan.
First a little introduction. At various times over the past 11 years, I have been involved in the reptile industry and have kept various species. After a hiatus to get my career started, I am now getting back into breeding reptiles with an emphasis on blood pythons. To that end, I have bought 30 blood pythons this year of all different types- red, black, and Borneo. I have only had one die, and that was only 3 days after I got it. One came in quite sick with mucus coming from the nose and mouth and I was able to turn her around to a healthy animal. I don't have the experience of breeding blood pythons yet, but I am maintaining a number of them and have sold a number of them when in retail years ago. In short, what I am doing, seems to be working. Here is what I am doing.
Reptile Basics (aka RBI plastics) advertises in the classifieds. Their cages make me look smarter than I am. The smallest babies are kept in the 32 qt. Iris Sweaterbox Rack System with the available lengthwise divider. These sweaterboxes are about 16" x 24" without the divider. Adding the divider lets me keep two babies per bin. You could go smaller than this on a newborn, and that might even be beneficial to help them feel more secure, but this size helps provide a thermal gradient where one end of the cage is warmer and the other end is cooler. Once they put on a little size, these blood pythons then get a whole 32 quart Iris Sweaterbox to themselves in the same rack system. This may last for a couple of years if you are growing your blood python slow. The next step is to one of Reptile Basics 4' x 2' cages with a built in divider down the middle (making two 2' x 2' cages) or directly to a 4' x 2' cage all of their own. All of my current racks have under belly heating and either Ranco or Helix thermostats. My future order of 4' x 2' cages will be with the radiant heat panels and fluorescent lighting.
There are other companies with good reputations which sell comparable caging. I started buying Reptile Basics cages when I realized they came pre-assembled and all the heating and thermostats could be bought at the same time from the same source. Having one expense on the credit card to explain to my wife rather than three different expenses works to my benefit. I am also a bit lazy when it comes to assembling cages. In my experience, Reptile Basics under promises and over delivers. My cages have typically arrived sooner than expected and were plug and go set ups.
Now you probably are not looking to spend that kind of money on caging, but let's consider why those cages work so well for blood pythons, and you will have a basis for setting up your own caging system. The racks and cages hold heat and humidity well. Aquariums, and other cages with screen lids, do not hold enough humidity in my house for blood pythons. Blood pythons with too little humidity seem more prone to respiratory infections. If you use a cage with a screen top, consider covering over most of the top of the cage to prevent losing too much humidity. Humidity can also be increased with a larger water bowl moved closer to the heat source. Be careful when you start covering over part of the lid that you don't turn your snake cage into an Easy Bake Oven. If your blood python is having trouble shedding, it is not getting enough humidity. Some people advocate humidity boxes which are small Sterilites or Rubbermaids with a hole cut in them for the snake to crawl in. Moistened sphagnum moss is placed in this humidity box. The humidity box is placed in the cage. These can work, but my hesitation is whether my python is choosing its ideal temperature or humidity. I'd rather raise the humidity in the whole cage, if practical and then let them pick the temperature.
So whatever cage type you use, make sure it can maintain a high humidity. Modify the cage as necessary until it can.
For substrate, I utilize newspaper. It is cheap and effective if perhaps ugly. If you go with a fancier substrate, it is likely to drastically increase your maintenance time.
I keep my blood pythons warmer than some others do. The cool end of my cages is typically 80-83F this time of year and the warm end is 89-92F. I measure those temperatures with an infrared temp gun (also bought at Reptile Basics). Most of the time when I point the temp gun at a young blood python, it will come back 86-87F. This seems to be their preferred temperature around here. That means I could probably lower the temperature on the warm end, but my blood pythons are still sharing racks with my Papuan pythons (Apodora papuana) who would probably sit at 95-100F if I let them. Low 90's are a compromise until I get enough racks to separate species, but the blood pythons seem to like it. Typically, my small blood pythons sit in the middle of the temperature gradient.
You could mimic most of what I do by buying a small aquarium, covering most of the lid, and getting a well regulated under tank heater, perhaps with a supplemental light (be careful not to take away too much humidity). The more shortcuts you take, the smarter you have to be and the harder you have to work. Buy at least one cheap thermometer that you can move around the cage and see what the temperatures are. If you want to go even cheaper, less esthetic, but perhaps more effective, you could buy an appropriate sized Rubbermaid or Sterilite container from Walmart, put some ventilation holes in it with a soldering iron or drill, and put an undertank heater under one end of the tank. Be careful that the undertank heater is not too hot.
Feeding blood pythons is usually easy. I feed about once a week as much as they will eat. I am trying to raise mine fast, though, and you could adopt a slower schedule or smaller meals. Baby bloods are started on hopper mice and large adults get rabbits with all sizes of rats in between. I only have one blood that prefers live over pre-killed. Some people like to start baby bloods on rat pinks so that they don't have to switch from mice to rats later. This can't hurt, but probably isn't necessary. Feeding problems with blood pythons are almost unheard of- unlike ball pythons.
You will likely find that your blood python is a little nippier than the ball pythons that you have kept. With a little handling, most blood pythons will calm right down. If you are worried about getting bit, then some gardening gloves are good to start taming sessions with. As the handling session progresses, you can take off one and then the other glove. A tame blood python is a neat snake. I don't recommend this, but I had a Borneo blood python in college that was so tame, and such a slug of a snake, that I could fall asleep watching TV on the couch with this snake on my chest. When I woke up an hour or more later, the snake would still be sitting there. They are not active snakes, but that can make them neat pets. Make sure you support their weight when you hold them.
Well, Matthew, I answered more than you asked, but I can cut and paste parts of this response into future responses. I hope you can glean some useful information from all of this and I hope I completely answered your question. Likewise, I am open to feedback from others.
Enjoy your new python.
Bryant King
