Message To: Ryoflex36 In reference to Message Id: 171860
Cages/Enclosures 
Hehe, well if you have everything right and can get the temperatures up to 90 on warm side and 80 on cool side with just the heat pad underneath, then yeah you won’t need any lights. If it might help...I’ll run down my shopping list when I want to get a cheap and efficient setup for a new snake.Enclosure: Appropriate sized sterilite/rubbermaid container. Shouldn’t cost you more than 10 dollars(for large models), and you can probably get a 2x1 foot container for 5 bucks at Walmart. Just needs to be modified. Drill some holes on the sides for air flow, and you’re done. Plastic tanks are known for keeping heat and humidity easier. And the price is right. :) Heat: Just get a human heat pad. They usually come with three temperature settings, and come in some pretty nice sizes for a good price. I bought my Dunlap heat pad from Walmart for my ball python. It cost me 15 dollars canadian. The pad is roughly 1 foot by 1 foot in size. You can also get larger sizes, of course. Hides: I just buy clay pot bottoms you can get at garden centers or Walmart stores. They’re perfect for ball pythons. They love to hide in tight, small round places, with as many walls touching their sides and back as possible. That’s why these clay pot bottoms are ideal. I bought them for a dollar each. Easy to use. Heres a website that explains the problems with hide spots people are using these days, and the best ones to use. Proper Hide Spot Info Water: Just any good sized water dish will be fine. As long as it’s big enough to have your snake coil up in to soak when it feels the need to. I like just going to Walmart(yes..walmart should be renamed herpmart...so many good things for budget-wise keepers) and picking up a proper sized dog dish for a few bucks. Greenery: I found a bunch of real cool plastic vines and bushes and stuff like that at a local dollar store. I bought enough greenery to fill a 20 gallon tank for maybe 5 bucks. Substrate: NEWSPAPER! Cheap, efficient, easy to come by. Of course you can use commercial stuff like reptibark or astroturf, but hey, I said cheap and efficient...so newspaper.  Thermometers: DONT USE THE STICKONS FROM PETSTORES! I can’t stress this enough. They’re not accurate at all, so you never know the true temperatures. It’s like guessing! Again...Walmart has it for you. Look for the Acurite digital thermometer/hygrometer with probe. It looks similar to this only where it shows the time, you can have it show another temperature. That way you place the base unit itself on the cool side to measure the cool temperature and humidity, and place the probe on the warm side under the warm hide for accurate temperatures in the hide spot on the warm side. That means with one unit, you can have accurate measures of both hot, and cool sides, and humidity. All of which are key to keeping a ball python. This generally runs you 10-15 dollars. And if you can’t find it at Walmart, look at Target and other stores like that. Or any decent knockoff will do of course. And you’re done. All you need right there, and it’ll cost you under 50 dollars. It’s not pretty(unless you swap newspaper for reptibark or astroturf), but it’s real efficient. So there you go. That’s my shopping list for easy snake homes. 
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Cages/Enclosures