HELP Please! Which is less stressful??

[Argentra]

Is is more stressful for a BP to be moved or to have fluctuating, weird temps all the time??

Nagini is currently in the 4x2 cage, and was moved in about two weeks ago. The humidity is always dropping around 40% in there (making me mist three or four times a day) and the temps are really unstable. I.E. Substrate surface warm side = 89-90, warm side hide = 95-97, ambient warm side = 78. Substrate surface cool side = 90-92(right over the ultratherm pad), cool side hide = 77-80, ambient cool side = 74-77.

So, my urgent question is this: Would it be better for her in the long run to move her into a tub for the winter while I work on that cage, or spare her moving stress and leave her in there? I would assume that moving her into a stable environment would be better, but I wanted to get some expert advice before I do it.

[frankykeno]

Personally I'd always go with the move into a more stable environment. The move might stress her out for a few days, but keeping her for months in an unstable environment will create constant stress and could lead to illness over the long term. I'd say move her once you are absolutely sure the new enclosure will hold temps before you put her in.

[BT41042]

Yep - What Joanna said...
BT

[JoshJP7]

If you continue to have issues with the temps/humidity send me a PM and I can give you some insight on how I got them stable in my 4x2 custom cage. As previously suggested get her in a stable environment first until the other cage is cocked locked and ready to rock.

[Freakie_frog]

I think that would be information that the whole community can benefit from. Giving it in Pm only limits the number of people that have access to the information and in so doing defeating the purpose of all of us being here.

[frankykeno]

If you continue to have issues with the temps/humidity send me a PM and I can give you some insight on how I got them stable in my 4x2 custom cage.

Josh, perhaps that information and your experience would be better shared in our threads where all can learn rather than in PM with just one member.

[JoshJP7]

I'd usually just throw the info out there but in the past I've caught heat when it comes to offering my advice on larger cages so I generally leave it up to the OP to hit me up if they would like my advice. Since you've asked for it

For starters if you have a pic of your cage please post it. This way I can see what your working with and offer you the most accurate advice.

#1 temp issues. Im guessing you've got your snake in a cooler room and use a heat pad for both the cool side and warm side to get temps up which is fine I do the same. Do you have them on separate thermostats? It looks like your warm side temps are fine your just having issues with the cool side and ambient temps. What kind of substrate are you using? I'm guessing your not using newspaper and the substrate is soaking up a bunch of the heat which is not helping your ambient temps. Not sure how you feel about making the switch to newspaper but this would allow the heat to transfer more feely into the air, thus increasing ambient temps. It looks like your allllmost there as 78+ is OK for the cool side. I think making this switch may just do the trick. If you do make the change make sure you mess with the thermostats as the switch will throw off your temps.

#2 Humidity... This ones going to be tricky... Since I have more than 1 snake it was more cost efficient for me to just buy a humidifier for the whole room(100$). This is obviously an option for you but if your looking to try something else you can go with a larger water bowl which hasnt really done much for me... or you can get a reptile humidifier from Petco(20$) and an air pump(15-40$). Ive only used these in glass tanks and they did the trick for me in there so I assume they will work here as well. I may be wrong but wood is much better at holding the humidity than glass so this should work. Just make sure you get an air pump large enough for your enclosure. Id say its probably pretty close to 100gallons, plus larger would be better in your case.

You can try these out and see if you get any changes. I know a room humidifier will most certainly solve you humidity problem but it costs a little more than the reptile humidifiers. Once you post a pic of the cage I might alter my advice but just going off what you posted previously I would give this a shot.

[Argentra]

1 - THANK YOU for the quick advice on moving her. I am going out in an hour or so to pick up a good tub and get it worked on for stable temps and humidity.

2 - JoshJP7, thank you for putting out that info on your cage. I have a few differences from you, and a few restricting factors, that make this a stranger situation.
My 4x2 cage is 3/8" PVC plastic, not wood. I know that wood sucks up heat, but it tends to distribute it fairly well. From what I've seen, this plastic gets really hot right over the source and then is stingy about distribution. As I said, the difference between the point over the source of heat and a few inches away can be as high as 20 degrees.
Yes, the warm side is on a t-stat, but due to the QT snakes in other rooms taking up stats, my cool side for that cage is on a rheostat. I know that this is one of my biggest problems, but there really isn't much I can do about it as of now. I tried plugging that ultratherm into the stat across the room (on the corn snake tank) via extension cord...but the difference in temps since the big cage is also near two outside walls and a window meant that the pad wasn't getting turned on enough, hence the rheostat. And yes, I have the window fully covered up and the cage wrapped with blankets...
Substrate may be an issue, and it will be the second one I deal with after the stat issue. I'm using a layer of newsprint under a just-enough-to-cover layer of aspen. I do this for that reason of heat distribution. I added the aspen once I noticed that the center spots over the heat sources were getting to the high 90's while everything else was upper 80's. The bedding helped to spread it a bit...but it also lowered them in many places.

As for humidity, I was thinking of getting a new humidifier since the whole apartment is rather dry. I'll look at prices today, but I'm on a very restricted budget since we lost a major portion of income recently...also not good when dealing with stuff like this and the reason I don't have enough thermostats.

Ok, I think that was long enough Sorry about that, but I wanted to make things a bit clearer. If anything there isn't clear, just let me know. I want to get this all cleared up and everything stable...I'm tired of being stressed out all the time.

[JoshJP7]

For your thermostat problem...I believe I have a spare cheap repti500 thermostat I could prolly part with... I will double check when I get home and If I do have one its yours for the taking if you want to pay the shipping... bout the only thing I can help you with there... what kind of heat pad are you using and is it on the outside of the cage or inside? If its on the outside thats where your losing alot of heat. You could move the heat pad inside the cage and put a layer of thin vinyl over the top to cover it from getting piss n poop on the heat pad. I got some spare vinyl as weel. I use to use the zoomed heat pads and like you said they got hot in the middle and faded off to the sides. I think I also have some spare flexwatt I could hook you up with if you want to try that out. It seems the flexwatt is more evenly distributed than the zoomed ones but thats just my opinion. Im surprised your having a hard time with the humidity in plastic. Usually plastic does well with keeping the humidity up but I guess there are acceptions. Out of curiosity how much did you pay for your cage? I built 4 - 4x2x1.5 cages for roughly 400$ so it cost me about 100$ a piece. When i was looking into plastic cages they wanted like 3-400$ for 1 so wood was the way to go for me.

[Argentra]

...Wow, that's really sweet of you to offer the thermostat and flexwatt. That would really help me out. Thank you very very much. I'll go ahead and PM you my address and such and you can give me a shipping estimate.

As for the cool side pad, it's an Ultratherm from ReptileBasics, which is also where I got the cage from for about $220. I was planning on building a wood/plexi cage, but a) had the money at the time for the bigger one, and b) I thought the plastic cage would hold heat better than the glass tank and I've been struggling with the cold here in CO. While I'm tweaking the big thing...I might try moving that pad inside with some vinyl, I think I have a stack of 8x10 panels I could stick over it.

And yeah, I'm really confused about the humidity thing as well...since that's another reason I decided to spend the money on the professional cage.