Ball python with possible mouth rot???!!!!?

With mouth rot, you will notice a cheesy like substance in his mouth, swelling and sometimes bleeding gums. I would not be too worried about your snake having mouth rot. If you are going to go to heat lamp. a 75 watt red bulb should be fine if the cage set-up is in a cool 75 degree room. You will need 2 thermometers with probes that you place on the bedding surface, a hide and a hygrometer in your BP's cage. With no hide, a BP will find a way to hide and even use it's water bowl as hide. It may be best to switch over to a bedding designed to produce humidity for tropical snakes like fir bark or Rept-Bark. A bedding like this can be misted regularly and is easily replaced if it happens to become moldy over time. If you are going to continue to use the heat pad as the main heat source for your snake's cage, I would recommend plugging it into either thermostat or, a rheostat to help out with regulating the cage temperatures and the heat output of any heating device that you wish to use to heat your snake's cage. Just because a heating pad is rated for a certain tank size does not mean that it is going to give you perfect ball python temperatures. A pad connected to either a rheostat or a thermostat will prevent the pad from getting too hot and possibly burning your snake again or even cracking the bottom of his tank. Have your snake examined by a vet again when you can.