Humidity whoas....

I'm stumped. I've tried everything I can think of and I can't keep her humidty stable without multiple mistings a day. I've tried placement of heat lamps vs the water bowl, I've gotten a bigger waterbowl (the water is evaporating so thats atleast working). I've even tried making every inch of much damp (then flipping it and repeating. But within 3-4 hours the humidity drops back down again to 35% (stabalizes there). The ambient humidity of the room is 63-65%ish.

My only other idea is to get a fogger or something. But would ground level fog be harmful to her? Would I be better off to mailorder a mister or something?

Anyone have any other suggestions?? Incase you don't remember its a 40 gallon breeder tank with about 1 1/2-2" of Cypress Muclch. a large human heating pad on high. The water bowl is on the heating pad side of the tank, as is a cave hide. Her favorite kleenex box however is on the cooler side of the tank. The hot side has a 100W CHE and holds ambient temps at snake level (2-4" off the ground) at 90degrees, and the cool side has a 50W red repti bulb (that i currently have turned off to see what effect that has on temps/humidity). The cool side ambients are 83-85 degrees.

Thanks.

-Chris

did you try getting rid of the light and just using the heat pad? and putting the water bowl over the heat pad? try using putting in more substrate...maybe use two water bowls.

You need a water pump in your dish, IMO
Mine works quite well, I use glass, too.......
Will? Where you at? Any more words on your reptiflo? Works great, doesn't it? :D
Look at our albums.......

Oh yeah, please please post pics of your setup in your albums....am curious. They are as fun to look at as the animals themselves 8)

retpifloooooo.

My tank setup pics are in my album, I also moved my old pics to a seperate album so it'll be easier to find stuff.

And if you don't want to remove the lamp as Mike suggested, you could certainly drop the wattage to 40 or even 15. It will put out a lot less heat, and if you need to bump up temp just add another heat pad or bump that one up to high but put a layer (or thicker layer) of newspaper under the mulch.

what kinda reptiflow do u have? is that the little water bubble thing? I don't really like those, but if thats all thats available i guess it'll have to do huh?

Can you take pics of urs will?

-Chris

How do you guys use just heating pads and maintain temps???? I've removed one and both lights and covered damn near the entire top in duct tape and cranked the heating pad up to high and the temps plummit to like 70ish (Ambient room temp)??

-Chris

Well I just put a second heating pad under her tank and set it to medium. The original one (the one in the pics in my tank album) is on high, and I removed the CHE. So I'm using two UTH's and a 50W Red Repti bulb. So I'll be runnin back and forth every so often checking out temp's.

-Chris

just checked out your tank pics.......i think you should ditch one lamp and get the duct tape back out
here's what I've got going on.....
https://ball-pythons.net/albums/glas.../Lid.sized.jpg

https://ball-pythons.net/albums/glas..._002.sized.jpg
and pump in action

if not duct tape then use saran rap over the screen lid and tape that on
its worked great for me in the past

now i just put peices of plexi glass cut to the right size and drill holes for ventalation its sweet because you can drill more holes to drop hummidity
i'll post pics when i get a chance

Ah, plexi glass..........rich man's duct tape

I have attached a pic of my housing..it is a 40 gallon. It will give you a good idea of how I have set mine up. Ofcourse, there are a few things you cannot see.

1. On the top of the cage, there is painters plastic tapes down, I have holes cut out just big enough for the heat emitter on the right side and the light on the left side. To maintain my heat, sometimes I have had to set the lamp fixtures directly on the top of the screen.

2. I have heating pads under this tank. One on both the warm and cool side. Typically, the right side is on med- hi... thats my warm side.. the left side sets on lo-med. My temps are extremely stable. Warm side- 90 degrees, but sometimes it does fluctuate and get up to 95. Because I dont like it to get that high, I just unplug the heat emitter. The cool side stays at 80 degrees, and never seems to fluctuate, other than the occassional drop because it had been cold here lately, and that is fixed by turning the heat pad up to med.

3. My humidity has been a little lower than I would like lately, but it is better than too high- as of yet, I have never heard of a snake getting RI from low humidity. So, I would rather see lower humidity. My snakes have been living like this for awhile now, and I have seen no ill effects. But, 1 of them I always have to help shed because of the lower humidity I suspect. Although, I dont mind..just another reason to give even more personal attention.

I think it is harder to maintain your humidity with the tanks... temps I dont feel are so bad once you get the right equipment. But as I said before, IMO it is better to have lower humidity than too high causing RI. We all have different ways of doing this stuff, you just have to figure out what works for you, and one thing I have learned, sometimes you have to decide where you are willing to make a trade off as I have done in relation to keeping lower humidity than higher with wrong temps. I know in the near future, I will be building a new cage for my boys... initially the 40 gallon would have been OK for just 2 of them, maybe still would be for 3, just a bit more cramped, but I have opted to make them a better cage thats bigger and holds my temps and humidity better than a tank. I will be working with all plexiglass... I thought about wood, but- thats pretty heavy, and harder to clean right.. I think the plexi may be a heck of alot lighter, plus easier to clean. When I get done experimenting, I will let you all know how well it works out, and post plans for it if it is as good as I got figured. At this point I have put together a small one for my experimentation. And for just the little one I built, it cost me a bit more than I expected, but cheaper than commercial cages, however, it is so far proving to be worth its cost. It may become my geckos new home cause it is perfect size..and then I may build another for my 3 bp's to live in.



https://ball-pythons.net/albums/BP-H...sing.sized.jpg

Ok Imma go break out the ducttape again...

I'm with will and steelsack the reptiflo i got last week made an incredible difference and at 15.00 you can't go wrong if you decide to try it.

"How do you guys use just heating pads and maintain temps???? I've removed one and both lights and covered damn near the entire top in duct tape and cranked the heating pad up to high and the temps plummit to like 70ish"

I asked the same question (See "Temps too low?") I did not know I was supposed to be measuring the SURFACE temperature, which it turned out was quite hot with the human heating pad. I just kept cranking up the temp in the cage with different lights and heat pad settings trying to increase the ambient air temp - meanwhile my snake was probably too hot. I was told not to worry much about the ambient air temp.

Far as I know, with glass you're never going to be able to make an UTH give you proper ambient temp. All you'll wind up doing is turning the UTH up and up and up untill you cook somebody's belly. Gotta use a bulb in conjuncture. To heat with just a heating pad, you need to pretty much lose the glass and go rubbermaid unless the room itself is nice and warm. Even then, if the temp of the room that the tank sits in is only 72 or so, that's about all you'll get for ambient temp give or take a degree or two. To have a UTH radiate enough heat to warm his enclosure you'd have to crank it............then again there are some that say that if the floor of the tank ranges from at least 75 to at most 92 with the help of UTH's, then ambient temp is not that crucial as long as it is not lower than 70. The logic here being that if the snake spends his time on the floor, his temps are regulated just fine by the UTH's. If you don't feel comfortable with that, then I'm afraid you will be using a bulb till summer. I plan on not using a bulb this summer. It gets plenty warm enough inside during that time of year IMO.
Glass is tricky, but nice for display. I must have spent 2 weeks messing around with my temps and such before my glass was ready to house a bp. It's worth it if you want to display your snake......or at least show off the hides :lol:
REPTIFLOOO