Sons first bp came home tonight

Congrats, your son sounds like my daughter who brought me back into the hobby! She wanted books about snakes and asked me to read it over and over and all the while asking for a pet snake :) I hope you and your family have a great experience!

Very cool pics! And I'm super jealous that you are that close to BHB!

As far as humidity, since you are using a tank you can try covering a portion of the screen lid with cling wrap/saran wrap type material.

Another possibility would be to have a piece of plexiglass cut (I think Home Depot will cut it for you?) to fit the inner lip of the tank top. Then using a soldering iron melt your ventilation holes in the plexi. You'd still have to use the screen lid for security, but it would look a little cleaner than the cling wrap.

Thanks for all the replies. We are very lucky to be so close to Bhb they are great. Ill mess with the humidity a bit. I have some tin foil covering a part of the top. I put a humidifier I'm my sons room I hope that helps. It is just so dry in our house during the winter. Anyway we feed Friday and then can handle a day or so later. It's was nice at Bhb because my son got to handle the snake a bunch before we got him home. Cool that he picked and affordable snake to fall in love with! He really likes the grey/black look.
ill post more pics in a few days when he can be handled again.

+1 on the plexi glass, one of the best things i done to my tank, NEVER had issued with humidity after doing it.

At nearly 40 years old I just got into the hobby myself and with two boys (8 & 10), I understand how it goes! I did a lot of research and wished I was as close as you were to BHB as I watch Snakebytes.tv on YouTube every chance I get and they have always had great information. The main thing is that they truly care for these animals and this industry. Huge fan...

As far as humidity, I also live in the Northern Midwest (MN just recently moved to SD for a career move) and I have the same humidity issues. With two balls (1-normal 1-spider) and two separate enclosures, it is a challenge keeping humidity up. I also use the plexi trick. Both my enclosures have a day and a night overhead lamp; day over the warm area and night lamp over the cool area. Lamps are notorious for zapping humidity, but they really help keeping the enclosures to temperature.

What I did was cut a piece of plexi and that covers half the screen top. During the day, the night lamp sits on top of the plexi (turned off) and my day lamp sits right on the screen (turned on). At night, I turn off the day lamp and move the plexi to the other half, set my day lamp on top of the plexi (turned off), turn on my night lamp and let the night lamp sit directly on the screen. The night lamp helps to evaporate the water in the dish to boost humidity (still enough in there for the snake though). With just this set up I can achieve around 40%-50% humidity this winter but sometimes dipping to 20%-30%. When it gets that low, I mist the substrate with bottled (filtered) water and it will rise to around 60%-70% for a few hours. I usually mist morning before I go to work, dinner time when I get home, and before I go to bed. Careful to not keep things so saturated everything is dripping as that can lead to scale rot on your snake. I do have moss in both enclosures and usually lightly mist my substrate then mist the moss a little heavier as the moss retains the moisture for a little longer period of time. Summers are normally much more humid and misting is on an as-needed basis only. (I use cypress substrate as it seems to retain moisture better and evaporates slower and have added an under the tank heater on each warm side).

With this setup I can maintain a warm side of 80-85 with a basking spot of 90, my cool side maintains 75-78. Night temps are around 75-79. Humidity averages 50%-60% and have two perfectly happy, healthy ball pythons.

***Double posted for some reason. Removed ***

Thanks for the tips. My humidity is around 25-30% right now. Ill try some more misting. I did put a humidifier in my sons room and that has helped a bit. Im using a CHE and I think that has a lot to do with drying out the enclosure. Ill keep looking for ways to keep it up.
Sure is a lot of fun learning all these new things and getting to share them with our kids.
By the way BHB is amazing. So cool its amazing to me how much Brian and the staff truly love those animals and take care of them as if they were all thier own pets and not breeding so much.

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Originally Posted by Seanjackmc

Notice the nervous laugh
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Did you happen to catch the name of the snake, is that sunshine??

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Originally Posted by Rob

Did you happen to catch the name of the snake, is that sunshine??

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Yeah thats her. She is a sweetheart. let my kids touch her and try to pick her up, very cool snake. They actually just sat on the floor while she cruised around them it was neat.

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Originally Posted by Seanjackmc

Yeah thats her. She is a sweetheart. let my kids touch her and try to pick her up, very cool snake. They actually just sat on the floor while she cruised around them it was neat.

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That's awesome, I'm sure a lot of people on here myself included are jealous you got to check out BHB like that.