Need help with humidity climing out of control.

Its an 80 gallon tank with a fitted acrylic partition in the middle which effectively turns it into two 40 gallon tanks. Its 21 inches tall, 18 inches deep, and 48 inches long overall. We fitted acrylic lids to the two sides. This makes the humidity on the ball python side go up to 95% with an open water dish. The heating element is an UTH 30-40 gallon size.

On the other side is a young corn snake and the temperature and humidity is right where it should be with no heater or anything. It just warms from the ball python's side. The acrylic lid holds that temperature in.

So with the lids I have to install ventilation fans. That keeps it down but then it gets the other side cold. If I put a heater in that side it will also have to have a fan.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The water dish is on the cool side, but because of the shape of the space the dish is only a few inches away from the heating pad. I was thinking of using a covered dish. Would that help much? What if I get a ceramic dish instead of plastic? That might prevent some heat transference into the water too.

This setup belongs to my brother and he's very partial to the lids.

You could drill some holes in the lid.

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Originally Posted by Bobbafett

You could drill some holes in the lid.

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x2
This is what I would do as well. Drill a couple holes on the BP side to let out a little bit of the humidity. Is the BPs water dish on top of the UTH? If so try placing it off of it.

In theory, if you're dealing with humidity that high, you ought to be able to just put a paper towel in there and let it soak up a little bit of moisture. I don't know if that's any danger to the snake, but if someone confirms that it wouldn't be, you could try that out.

It started off looking like this. We have lots of holes in the top. We replaced the green reptile carpet with slate and UTH is under that all the way to the right on the side of the tank with the red background.

http://i491.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMAG0087.jpg

It was originally going to be for a king snake but we put him in a 10 gallon instead.

Then we tinted the partition and the sides. So the slate is under the substrate in the next pic. The water dish is that jug bottom he's climbing on. Its just a temporary dish until we figure out the other stuff.

http://i491.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMAG0120.jpg

So I'm thinking about this...
1, put a ceramic bowl in with a lid with a hole on it.
2, put the UTH in the middle under the partition and put the bowl on the other side of it.
3, drill the holes in the lid wider and also drill more of them
4, my brother wants to install a CPU fan in the lid and put a protective screen over it.

I also have acrylic lids that my boyfriend made for my Amazon Milk frog tank. They definitely hold the moisture in which is why we decided to go with them for the frogs. From looking at your pictures I think there might be a few things you could do without switching them out if you really don't want to use screen instead. First you could turn the holes on the ball python side into slits (just extend the holes to connect). By doing that you would have more air flow. I'm not sure what kind of bedding you're using (I'm very new to snakes) but using something that doesn't hold a lot of moisture should help if you're not doing that already. Do you mist the tank and if so how often?

Never had to mist the tank. Here in coastal Texas the outside humidity is like 90% and inside the house its 60% with the air conditioning.

Actually its funny you mention frogs because we jokingly call his tank the frog box since it holds so much humidity.

We did consider extending the holes into slits and may still do so. The concern there is that the structural integrity of the lids will be compromised. I'm working on a design to compensate for that. We have also had a suggestion to use door knob sized vents set into the lid in lieu of the CPU fans.

These acrylic lids have a tendancy to bow down into the tank anyway. My tank is a 75 gallon with a double lid as well hinged in the middle. We bought handles that just slide over the acrylic (not glued on) so when they bow we just flip them over until they bow again. They really are a pain but convenient when it's feeding time.

*Edit* to add not to make the slits too long a few inches for each one should do the trick

Just felt the need to ask:

Are you using a digital or analog hydrometer?

If its analog, it's probably off.

Is there condensation on the glass sides?