Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone use ambient room temps to keep their ball pythons regulated instead of heating the individual cage or rack? I live in Florida and could easily keep a room at 92 degrees during the day for most of the year. The humidity wouldn't be a problem either since it's usually higher than 90 percent most days. What I wouldn't have is a cooler spot in the enclosure . . . Am I asking for trouble? Has anyone tried it and been successful? Thanks for your advice.
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Alice Cobb

You can maintain Balls at 82-84F & they will do well (even breed good) but it does not mean that is all they want. Give them a temp gradient so they can pick & choose what they want/need at any particular time. Yes you are asking for trouble keeping them at 92F ambient temp everyday (92F is the upper range of their heating requirements & not giving them a cooler spot will probably lead to a dead snake eventually).
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Chad Bachman

Nice people suck!!!!!!!

My snake room is at an Ambient 85 degrees all year round..My Balls shed perfect,Eat great,and breed great!

Ball pythons Live in the ground! they don't have Heat tape!As much as I have read and understand, Ball Pythons stay underground until night time! Of course they are Nocternal-but you must think at night it is way cooler than it is in the day!!! I would think that even more so since they are in Africa!

So My guess would be that they are keeping themselves as close to ambient as they possibly can! There Ambient most likely being Earths Temp a few feet underground!!! And if i am at all correct is in the 80's.

These are just my thoughts though, with the exeption of my snake room being at an ambient 85.

ISAAC

Can they survive and even thrive at a set ambient temp? I believe so. However, I live in central FL and my animals quite feeding once they reach a certain ambient high temp - above 85. I would be very surprised if they would even feed at 92 degrees.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

I have found that most of my babies wont eat if my ambient isnt 85 . Most of my adults wont eat if it gets over 85. I think there just trying to make my life harder. So I feed the babies in the day and adults late at night.

keep a fan on and a heater running when needed...

keep the room at 82 to 87 degrees at your chest level......

they'll do ok.

the ones on the floor will be colder....so you may have to get some colubrids to fill in the bottom cages..

I did it for 15 years.......

92 they go nuts and are too hot.......(usually)...and you will die......my room averages 83 .....
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................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhOK

"the ones on the floor will be colder....so you may have to get some colubrids to fill in the bottom cages..."

LMAO =)

Chris
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mean people suck

not funny....true.if you have all balls you cannot keep them at floor level at 79 degrees or less.....they won't do well......so fill in bottom cages with cave dwelling rats,coxi,hondurensis,corns,garters?.etc etc.....anything that will adapt to the colder cages....

........have fun.......

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................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhOK

I use baseboard heaters! HEAT rises! so the entire room is 85..
Floor,walls,roof!
It is not very hard to put them in either!cost you less than $100 bucks to pick up at Home Depot!

Another Idea is just run heat tape up and down your walls and floor,roof,ect...and leave the balls in the middle of the room!
Perfect! LoL!!

Isaac

You could also rotate or flip the room upside-down every few hours. That would save a LOT of money on heat tape. The heat taped walls, floors, and ceiling idea is just too expensive and not practical at all.

Chris
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mean people suck

Ya! I guess thats not to practical.. I do like the Idea of rotating the room though..I thought of another good one and this should be a good one...

You could set up 100 mecury vapor bulbs..that should heat the room up to sy 110 degrees.... All around!

Isaac

Okay...

In my office (writing station & private zoo) is a ceiling fan...

Using approximately four feet (4ft) of industrial rubberband, hang the heat emitter of your choice (I like kerosene lanterns best) from one of the fan blades...

Once suspended, pull the kerosene lantern down toward the floor stretching the industrial rubberband...

Release...

Crawl toward the office door and flip the ceining fan switch to the ON position as you leave.

The kerosene lantern should be bouncing up and down on the industrial rubberband heating the room vertically as the turning fan swings the lantern around heating the room horizontally.

(Wow! My brilliance amazes me sometimes! MacGyver WHO?)

Chris
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mean people suck

Perfect!

Chris, sometimes ya worry me Bro. One of them thangs hit the wall just right you'll heat the whole house right quick

Quig

The ceiling fan part will work. I keep the fan on low to help circulate the air and it really makes a big difference in keeping the temps even from floor to ceiling. Drys out the water bowls faster tho.

Stay away from those flying,bouncing kerosene heaters! lol

Cheryl

And that's not funny? LMAO =)

Why not simply keep those racks empty? To suggest the need to buy, keep, and/or breed an entirely new species of snake simply to fill the empty space is very funny to me. LMAO =)

Chris
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mean people suck

In my experience the hotter the better for growing hatchlings. Their metabolism is super high around 95 F. For example, a couple of pastels 1.1 that I picked up in November '04 at around 150 grams are now about 1100 grams each. Lets see they should be around 1500 grams at their first birthday...lol. But do not forget that mice eaters grow slow...lol However, I always allow a heat gradient, but I only put their hides over the hot spot. For adults temps more around 80-90 are better if you are interested in breeding at all. One of my BPs prefers 70 F (no joke) and he has never had an RI. If I turn the heat up, he will not eat and will not go near the hot spot. He's Ice cold.
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when life hands you lemons, make super lemons, bumblebees, etc...

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