Okay, stupid rubbermaid question.

I know I know, there are no stupid questions...

Anyway, I have a question about airholes. I drilled holes on all sides, 10 on each short side and 12 on each long side. This provides enough oxygen for him, right? I pretty much followed the Do It Yourself instructions, so I'm assuming that it's okay, but I'm just checking.

It would only take a few airholes to provide enough oxygen. Start out with fewer than you think you might need...because it's easier to drill more, rather than try to cover them up if you have so many your humidity leaks away.

Well my humidity is okay with the amount of airholes I have now. In fact, it's pretty high! It's gone up and down, anywhere from 60%-75%. Right now it's at 73%. Is that too high?

Thats a little bit on the high end. You usually bump it up to the 70's and 80's during shed. Here is an idea Gen. Most people will adjust their humidities before putting their pets inside. The snake is a living breathing creature and hence will contribute to the humidity of the surroundings! So if you already had your humidity at 55 to 60 percent before putting him inside, the chances are they will go up. Hope this helps some :)

To add to what I've already said, a higher humidity is not all that bad either, provide you keep the temps in the desired range. In they wild in Africa, they are used to the humidity going up to 95% Its just that when you have them in a captive enclosure, it increases the chances of bacteria developing over time. So if you spot clean your cage and change your substrate everyday, chances are that he will live a long healty life without an RI.

Well, I just moved his water dish over so that it wasn't so much over the heating pad. Now the humidity is reading at 67%, but that might just be because I had the lid off enclosure. I'll keep my eye on it and see how it goes.

I will look into buying a remote humidity sensor in the future :wink:

I'm so glad humidity control shouldn't be a problem where I live in Texas. Lately, the humidity has been so high (as high as 100%, but normally in the 60's) you could take a shower outside without even using the hose. LoL, even inside it's just *bleh*, but a future BP won't have a problem with it. Oh yeah, I had a question on Rubbermaids/Sterilite. I was looking at some online and found this nice, 43x22x18, 50 gal, but it's a solid blue. Would that mess up a BP light cycle? I'm thinking it would, unless the light outside was strong enough to penetrate the utter blueness of the container. Sorry such a long post, I just want to be confident that all this stuff is ok to use. Thanks a bunch.

Becky

Becky, BP's don't really need a photocycle unless you're going to breed them, it's just important to avoid giving them light too many hours of the day. If you want to use that container you certainly can, and if you want to provide a photocycle, you can just replace a reasonable portion of the lid or one side with galvanized steel mesh (attach it easily with cable ties).

gen, i only have 8 holes drilled in the tops of my rubbermaids. they aren't at all air-tight so breathing isn't the problem.

Ohh ok. Thanks for letting me know. My aunt was going to give me this 60 gal glass tank she had for hers, but I'd rather the snake be happy than be able to see him/her all the time. And that mesh you're talking about, is it the rubber coated stuff or the --- cloth (sorry I didn't know the word)? I would think to use the rubber coated mesh so they wouldn't hurt themselves if they bumped their head on it. I appreciate all of ya'lls help.

Becky

The mesh is also called hardware cloth and if you're lucky you can find it with rubber coating to reduce nose rub problems. If you can't, though, you can also buy craft mesh at Joann's or WalMart or Hambrick's or Michael's or whatever store you have that sells such things, and it's a plastic mesh that people use for a sort of rudimentary embroidery and would be perfectly usable if you clip out a couple of little crossbars to make the holes a little bigger (1/4" or so).

Okay, I ended up drilling some more holes, in the top of my rubbermaid, yesterday because the humidity was just way too high, getting over 80%. I also checked the outside humidity for where I live on Yahoo weather and it said 100% humidity at the time, so that might not have helped. Anyway, the humidity in the enclosure is down to 69% now which is still just a little higher than I'd like it, but I'm hoping it will go down as the outside humidity goes down? 100% humidity is pretty high for southern california, it's usually around 50 from what I've seen.