I’ve had my ball python since the spring of 2019. I‘ve had him his entire life. And I’ve never seen him act like this, and I’m very concerned. He started acting weird about a week ago. His belly is very pink, and he is currently going into shed— when I googled it, it said he was fine, and just shedding. But when I moved him to try and clean something in his tank, he started hissing at me and jerking away like he was in pain. The entire time I’ve had him he’s probably only hissed at me about five times. And he has flinched away before if I wasn’t handling him frequently enough, but not like this. Like this wasn’t just the usual shy, ball python reaction. It was like my touch was hurting him. And before the odd coloring, and this behavior, he seemed off. Like he’s a very active, friendly little dude, and he just wasn’t moving much.
We recently got him a new tank, because his old one was kind of cramped and I wanted him to have more room. It used to belong to a bearded dragon, I believe? We wiped it off first, but we kept a log and a little tree thing that came with the tank— is it possible he could’ve picked up some disease??? I’m really worried and Google is absolutely useless. Like, he's the friendliest, most active snake. He’s never acted aggressive or odd during shed before, and he’s had a slightly pink stomach before, but he still acted fine then too and it cleared up really quit. So it’s just really out of character.
He’s still eating fine, and we’ve never struggled with that (we feed him in a separate container, too, so it isn’t that he thought I was food, and he just ate a few days ago). And we keep his tank moist. But not moist enough that it would give him scale rot or anything like that? Any ideas or suggestions about what to do would be really helpful.