Heating/Humidity

I currently have my adult BP in a 40 Gallon with an UTH and 100 watt dome light. I have been running the dome light for 12 hours and then using a night light in the evening. The heat seems good, but the lights are sucking up all the humidity. I spray multiple times each day, but the humidity sits around 45%. I wanted to see if anybody uses just an UTH for their BP and if that would sufficiently heat a 40 Gallon.

Most people do not use any lighting for BP's. They do not require it and as you have found out suck the humidity out of the enclosure. Most get by with a UTH or equivalent only. Whether you need supplemental heat depends on the ambient temperature. If you can maintain ambient temps between 84 and 86 degrees f, you do not even need the UTH. All of my ball pythons have ambient heat only.

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Originally Posted by caccha1

I currently have my adult BP in a 40 Gallon with an UTH and 100 watt dome light. I have been running the dome light for 12 hours and then using a night light in the evening. The heat seems good, but the lights are sucking up all the humidity. I spray multiple times each day, but the humidity sits around 45%. I wanted to see if anybody uses just an UTH for their BP and if that would sufficiently heat a 40 Gallon.

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Is your UTH on a thermostat? The main issue is to keep the hot spot around 90, but not too hot. Most of the time if that is on point, the ambient heat will be on point. Also, I constructed a cover for mine (see pics) as I have mesh screen top. If interested, lemme know and I can tell you what I made mine from. This has helped me keep my humidity up for about 5 days until I have to mist again vs every day without it. It has also helped to up my ambient temps. I still sit my heat lamp on top just in case, but haven't even turned it on since I've made the lid cover.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...532d97ba83.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...24224e084e.jpg

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I use a lamp or two depending on tank size, all hooked up to thermostats. Leaving a light on all day will definitely zap all the humidity quick. My room sits at 75f. Thermostats are set to 80 to 82 depending on location in the room. They come on for a 5-10 minutes a hour basically. Tanks are insulated with foam board. Humidity never gets lower than 50. But I usually spray every 3 or 4 days to keep it higher.

After I insulated my tanks I found my uth did bring the ambient up a few degrees. I also use bigger uth then the size recommendation. And they actually go about 2/3 across the bottom lengthwise. Ending a 4-5 inches before cool hide but still completely under water dish. But just having your lights controlled by a thermostat they will only be on when you need them and not killing humidity constantly.

I have a little over half of the screen too covered with heavy duty foil to try and keep some heat and humidity in. I turned the heat lamp off about 20 minutes ago and the temp is holding around 86 and humidity at 54%.