My lavender corn will go into an almost catatonic like state when she goes blue. You can mess around with the stuff in her viv, even take her hide off of her and she'll lay completely motionless as though she were dead. Touch her and she barely moves. Scared my wife half to death the first couple times. Couple days later and she's out and about doing her snakey thing.
As for the thermostat you've gotten some great advice, I have 2 tub racks and used rather expensive stats on those but also have a smaller one that I just built so my son can have his snake in his room. I put a dimmer switch on it and took almost a week to make sure everything stayed consistant and was very impressed with the results. Its very steady with a +/- of less than 2 degrees over the course of that week. Cheap to boot at only 10 bucks. Although it may not work so well with a tank setup and does require basic wiring knowledge to hook up.
As for the thermostat you've gotten some great advice, I have 2 tub racks and used rather expensive stats on those but also have a smaller one that I just built so my son can have his snake in his room. I put a dimmer switch on it and took almost a week to make sure everything stayed consistant and was very impressed with the results. Its very steady with a +/- of less than 2 degrees over the course of that week. Cheap to boot at only 10 bucks. Although it may not work so well with a tank setup and does require basic wiring knowledge to hook up.