Ron's Ball Python Blog

I receive quite a bit of emails and phone calls from people asking questions about should they buy this or that for their ball python. I’ve recently experienced an unusually high number of inquiries about which type of heat rock I recommend.

The long answer is NONE and the short answer is NONE as well. You should avoid heat rocks as if your life depended on it and I say this because your ball pythons’ life in fact does depend on it not having one. Heat rocks are best suited for lizards and other reptilian creatures but it’s fatal for ball pythons despite the savvy marketing attempts of companies that place images of snakes on their heat rock products. In a nutshell, heat rocks do exactly as their name implies, they heat a rock. The problem with heat rocks (unless they’ve updated the technology) is that heat rocks oftentimes have hot spot areas that can get extremely hot, oftentimes exceeding 130F.

Ball pythons are unable to tell if their belly heat has exceeded the “safe zone” and will lie contently on the heat rock while it’s literally cooking their underside. You would imagine that a ball python would know that it’s too hot and run (or should I say crawl) for cover. Not so is the case with ball pythons because they physically lack the ability to know how hot their belly (ventral scales) is and this is the reason why heat rocks are dangerous for ball pythons.

Heat rock that plugs into an AC outlet

A safer and better approach to providing belly heat is to use a UTH (under tank heater). They affix to the underside of your ball pythons’ cage and provide a uniform heating area. You must be careful and aware of the heat emitting from the UTH because it too can be very dangerous to your ball python because some UTH brands can exceed 130F and will cause similar harmful results as heat rocks. You should purchase a rheostat or thermostat (see How to Wire a Ranco ETC-111000 Thermostat for more info) so you can control how hot the hot spot area gets in your ball pythons' tank without leaving it up to guesswork. Another thing you can do is add more substrate to the hot spot area, thus creating a larger barrier between your ball python and the UTH but that’s really a pointless exercise because ball pythons burrow and can still get burned. I actually heard about a ball python owner who used a UTH without a thermostat and the intense heat caused the substrate to catch on fire, thus killing the ball python and causing a major fire that totally consumed his home.

Zoo Med and several other companies offer very good and reliable UTH heating pads in a variety of sizes but you still want to control how hot the area should be and not leave it to “chance”.

Zoo Med under the tank heater

If you already have a heat rock for your ball python, unplug it, remove it from your ball pythons’ cage and toss it in the trash. If you don’t own one, don’t consider buying one. Just stick with a UTH or top-down heating such as a ceramic heat emitter or nocturnal heat bulb and make sure you get a rheostat or thermostat to ensure the hot spot doesn’t get any hotter than you specify.