Quarantine cage

I bought another ball python today, and I've set up a new cage. The new cage will be in a separate room from my other snakes as is usual for quarantine practice. I'm also not going to use "natural" bedding until I'm pretty comfortable with her/his health status. The basics of this cage are as follows.

I have two small heat pads on the right side of the cage controlled by a Zoo Med 500R thermostat. I have a Ranco on order, and I'll change thermostats when the Ranco arrives. I taped some newspaper over the glass directly above the heat pads. While this step is not an absolute safety, my new snake will have to work pretty hard to put her belly against the hot glass. I think that it would be harder for her to burn herself on newspaper than on glass because of different heat transfer properties. I have been trying to line out the cage for several days. I changed my setup this evening, so there will be some remaining fluctuations, but I'm hoping to keep her warm side temperature around 90 F.

The cool side hide and the water dish are pretty typical. The water dish is just a little dish that I bought at Big Lots for about a dollar or two. The hide is available from many reptile supply houses and is a simple, square hide.

The unique feature of this cage is the humidity box. I don't want to put anything organic like moss into the cage at first, but I wanted something that would hold a little humidity. I've bought a little container and filled it with Easter eggs. I probably need to get more eggs for the container. I filled the bottom of the container with water, and I hope that water vapor evaporating from the bottom will condense on the Easter eggs and fall back into the bottom. If so, the humidity at the bottom of this container under the eggs will be fairly high. I don't know whether a snake would be comfortable burrowing in a bunch of plastic eggs. If she (or he) is, then there's a good place to go to get more humidity. If she doesn't like the eggs, I'll find another medium to put in the box.

I put up the background around the back and one side of the cage to give my snake a little more privacy. I've heard that ball pythons like that covering, and my other ball python seems to like her cage this way.

After I put the cover over the aquarium and secured it, I put a newspaper over the screen. I'll make something better at another time, but I wanted to put something over the screen to reduce the loss of heat and humidity. The newspaper doesn't completely cover the screen, so air flow is still available.


Bill