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Lighting

Quick-guide

Give snake lighting for approx 12 hours a day.

Do not use night lights, UVB varies.

If you ask me, every reptile needs a clear day/night cycle. This basically means your animal should have light during the day, and no light at night. However, specific lighting isn't necessarily a requirement for corn snakes. Ball pythons are considered nocturnal, being most active at night. This means when in their natural habitat, ball pythons don't receive much, if any ultraviolet rays, meaning UVB (ultraviolet B) lighting is definitely not a necessity. With that said, many people have noticed positive changes and effects when their ball pythons are given access to UVB bulbs.

The second debate, however, comes in when dealing with albino ball pythons. Albinism cause animals' eyes and skin to be more sensitive to light, so it's possible UVB actually irritates your albino snake, more than it benefits him or her.

My personal suggestion for this would be to stay on the safe side, and keep UVB off of albino ball pythons, at least for now, since we know it's not required, but there are still questions as to whether it does harm the more sensitive morphs.

Anyway, yes, I suggest you give your ball python some lighting. Whether this is done by adding an LED panel or fluorescent light bulb on top of your enclosure, or simply giving your snake indirect window lighting. Just giving the animal some way of telling night from day is great.

Using bright lights at night is also something I highly suggest you avoid. Even if that red bulb is marked as a "nighttime" bulb, reptiles can, in fact, see this, and are probably not appreciative of it. On top of that, harsh red lights have been known to irritate reptiles in general, according to many experienced keepers.

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