Problems with homemade tub set-up for new ball pythons

Hi everyone,

I am a new ball python owner, and I think I've run into just about every problem one could have. I adopted my two bps less than two weeks ago from craigslist. Having owned a healthy corn snake for several years, I wanted to give some snakes in need a new home. The pair I adopted are both under 1 year old, but they were being kept together in a ten gallon tank with a white bulb as their only heat source. I have gradually made many improvements in their tank and today I finally was able to switch them into 15 qt tubs.

The set up I have now consists of two separate tubs in a makeshift rack (the tubs fit into the slots of a wicker drawer nightstand I had. I pulled the drawers out and put the tubs in.) It is being heated by a heat cable, regulated by a thermostat, and I have ventilation holes drilled all around the outside. I put repti-bark in as substrate, then added water dishes and several hides. Right now, the only method I have to measure humidity is one of those unreliable dials. The humidity was at a rather high 80% before I moved the snakes in, but now it is reading at 100%. In their tank, I was having a lot of trouble keeping humidity up. Now it's way too high. I'm sure there is some error in the dial, but it seemed to be fairly accurate in the tank (it showed an increase in humidity when I added moisture to the tank).

I know the basic solutions to this problem - cut more ventilation holes, use a fan, smaller water bowls, etc, but I'm looking for more. I'm wondering if my substrate might be increasing the humidity? The bark is pretty dry, though. There's no condensation in the tubs, so I'm wondering if the snakes will be okay for a few days while I work on their set up more? Any advice on what to do for their set-up would be really helpful. I've already invested a lot of time and money into this project, so I'm looking for some simple solutions or some long-term solutions.

Welcome to the site!

As long as there isn't lots of condensation forming on the walls of the tubs/anything in the tubs you should be fine. The parts of Aftica that BP's come from regularly has humidity levels well into the 90% range at the height of the wet season.

Sounds like you might already be leaning this way, but the most cost effective solution will be to drill another row of holes in the tubs you already have. A smaller water bowl will help, and you might think about switching your substrate to paper towels, newsprint or kraft paper, since they don't really hold humidity unless you mist them.

If you switch over to 28 qt tubs, and keep the same set up you have, you will see a drop in the humidity (larger air space), but the 28 qt tubs most likely won't fit into the same place you have your 15 qt tubs now.

Take out bark and try news paper