Cage Help

My ball python is in a 40 gallon breeder. I have a UTH, red bulb, and fluorescent lighting. I am aware that ball pythons don’t require any lighting, but my room rarely gets light; so I want to be able to regulate day/night times. Plus the red bulb does no justice whatsoever. Yes it provides the accurate heat, but unfortunately humidity doesn’t last. I’m debating whether to replace the screen lids with plexiglas? Also if I went the plexiglas route; how would I place my light bulbs? My cage isn’t one whole screen it has two openings. I’m happy with my set up, but I am looking for a better solution.

I don't know what to say about your lighting as your room rarely gets light. So you don't have any windows or anything? I use a ceramic heating bulb with emits no light, and I just leave the curtains open to regulate his natural day/night schedule. I usually don't worry about humidity too much, a couple of sprays of water every now and then works for me. I just leave the lamp sitting on top of the mesh top to keep him warm. Be careful to not let your snake burn himself if you do this though.

I use an infrared bulb for my cool side heat as well, so I know how frustrating it is to keep humidity up. I have most of my screen top covered with a towel, and I just mist more often and try to keep the substrate relatively damp.

You could always use smaller pieces of plexiglass to cover as much of the screen top as possible, since I can imagine cutting holes in plexiglass for your lights could be a tricky process. Or covering the top with aluminum foil (and shaping it around your lights) could work too.

I have almost the EXACT same setup you do, minus a fluorescent bulb, and I couldn't get the humidity over 30%. I put a moist (just mist the hell out of it 'til it's damp to the touch, not TOO wet) towel over 85% of the screen top and I haven't had a problem since. My humidity sits at about 55% for majority of the time and I only have to wet the towel every morning (since I have a space heater in my room it dries the towel out).

This should fix your problem and it costs nothing!

Use a polycarbonate (you can buy small sheets at home depot) instead of plexiglass, the stuff is 200x stronger than plexi and much more heat resistant. They were like 15-20$ bucks for a 24"x12". I have had 100w heatlamps 3-4 inches above ventilated polycarbonate for years. I drilled a few rows of half-inch holes through it (I don't know how big your snake is). If you watch my Bredli video in my sig at some point you get a brief shot of the top of my setup, 3:05.

The 100w infrared occasionally buckles the one section up (very slightly) but it is perfectly fine. The 100w daybulb doesn't cause any buckling at all.

Do not put a basking light on top of this though.

Ok thanks everyone for all the helpful information! As of right now I’m going to try the natural light method instead of the florescent bulb. Also I can’t seem to get the right temps, if I only use an UTH. The basking area doesn’t get warm enough.