Temp Low/Humidity High

Well... Updating previous post...

Woke up around 8 this morning to feed my mother's flippin' chickens... Talk about a load of crap, literally.

Anyway, checked on Monty (his name from previous owner) around 9am. He's just chilling out, probably asleep, under his log.

Right before I went to sleep, at around 3am, the probe said that the temperature was around 85 degrees. I was pretty happy with that, but now it's dropped back down to around 78. The humidity seems to be leveling out a little bit.

Goals for today are to get him a snack, a UTH, a UTH control device of some sort, and a real thermostat (Accurite sounds good to me).

Alrighty.

Mission for the day was pretty much accomplished.

Got a UTH, a second thermometer with a probe so that I can measure the temperature on both sides of the cage, a digital thermo/hygrometer so that I can accurately measure humidity and what I believe is a rheostat. Reptile store was closed today, so feeding will have to wait until tomorrow, but that's probably not a bad thing, I figure. Since they're not supposed to eat if they're stressed, right? I imagine he's probably still a little stressed out.

Now, someone tell me if this.......
http://i46.tinypic.com/zmxzb.jpg
is a rheostat.....

Obviously it's not as good as a real thermostat, but I figure it's better than nothing as far as regulating the heat pad goes. Anybody that's got any experience with these things, please chime in. The device is rated for 120 watts and the heat pad only takes 8 watts, so I don't know if that means I should crank it up real high or low or it doesn't even matter that the control is for a much larger device. Someone help me out there.

Mission for tomorrow - chlorhexidine, new hides, food.

That is just a lamp dimmer, but will work as a temporary fix until you can get a thermostat. You will need to monitor it quite a bit in case of spikes.

I definitely recommend spending the $100 and getting a herpstat basic. I screwed around with dimmers and such while I waited for mine to arrive when I first got mine, and it's a pain in the ass.

That is a lamp dimmer, and as stated, you will need to check temps VERY often with a temp gun or digital probe thermometer. I use the same exact thing for my heat light, but that's a whole different ball game. The thermostat from amazon is around $26 shipped to your door, and works pretty well for a single tank. (I wouldn't trust it with flexwatt, or a rack or anything, but a single tank with a heat pad it seems to do well with)
Someone already posted the link, but here it is again
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000NZZG3S

You might want to thin out that bedding a bit, or you're probably going to have a hard time getting warm side up to 90 without putting that pad on full blast. If you have that much bedding, and have to pump up the heat pad high to get top of substrate 90, that means your below substrate / glass temp is going to be well over 100. If Monty decides to burrow at all, he will have a chance of coming in contact with that hot glass. Most of the time I see people suggest 1/2" bedding, it doesn't look like much, but that way the pad has to be at a lower setting to get the right temps, and you don't have to worry about burrow-burning your baby. More experienced keepers will hopefully chime in, and might correct any mistakes in advice I've given. I'm a new keeper myself so definitely get multiple opinions. I hope he thrives wonderfully for you!