You can make your own humid hide.

Greetings,

I've seen some post on this forum regarding humidity chambers so I thought I would share this. My daughter made this natural looking humidity chamber for her anery (corn snake) and photographed it. We also have one for our royal. It's really simple to make and costs next to nothing to make.

Supplies:
An appropriately sized half log hide
A pair of scissors
A piece of paper
A fine point marker
A short length of rubber tubing (medical type)
A semi rigid piece of plastic


Step 1
Trace the outline of the hide base on a piece of paper.

Step 2
Trace the ends of the log hide on the piece of paper.

Step 3
Cut out the oval shaped template from the piece of paper and wrap it around the log making sure it fits neatly and tightly.

Step 4 (example)
The plastic my daughter used was the box from a software package from Costco.

Step 5
Trace your paper pattern onto the plastic.

Step 6
Cut the pattern out of the piece of plastic and fold then ends around your hide to ensure it has a nice snug fit. This will prevent it from drying out as quickly.

Step 7
Use something round to trace an appropriately sized hole on one end of the plastic. The whole should be somewhat larger than your snake at its fattest point.

Step 8
Take a length of medical tubibg and slit it lengthwise from end to end, making sure that you cut straight, without twisting the tubing. Open the slit and slide the tube around the edge of the hole you previously cut in the plastic . This is important so your snake does not cut his belly going in and out of the hide. Finally, place some damp sphagnum moss inside the hide (ZooMed Terrarium moss will do fine). Your snake now has cozy place to hydrate when it needs or wants to.

Be sure the wood has been sanitized by baking it in the oven before introducing it into the cage. If your worried about mold, you can put 4 coats of clear satin polyurithane (sp?) on the inside of it. If you do, be sure and give it about a week to dry so there's no oder left.


Cheers,
Jason

http://lantech.geekvenue.net/snakes/hbox1.jpg

http://lantech.geekvenue.net/snakes/hbox2.jpg[/img]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing!!

EDIT: WELCOME!

wow thats neato! i might have to try somethin like that!

Well done, and great pictures to boot :) Welcome to the site.

Thats a pretty good idea!!

Wow, that's ingenious! I never would have thought of that, lol. Kudo's to your daughter for being so creative. It's relatively cheap, and doesn't have to ruin the naturalistic look of some peoples cages. Nice!

Are those half-log hides real wood? Are they treated to prevent the gowth of mold? I'd be very nervous about mixing wet moss and wood because mold in a ball pythons environment can be deadly.

-adam

Quote:

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Are those half-log hides real wood? Are they treated to prevent the gowth of mold? I'd be very nervous about mixing wet moss and wood because mold in a ball pythons environment can be deadly.

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That was the first thing I thought. It does have a nice, naturalistic look to it, but safety is a bigger concern for me. The coconut basket hides I've posted about before have a nice natural look and are naturally mold/mildew resistant. They seem to be good for up to several months before they begin to grow mold, so I'd recommend replacing them on about a 4-month schedule.

Edit: By the way, they can be used as either normal hides or humid hides, over a container of damp moss, with entry cut at top, bottom, or in the middle.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marla

They seem to be good for up to several months before they begin to grow mold, so I'd recommend replacing them on about a 4-month schedule.

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Just remeber that long before you can see the mold growing there are unseen mold spores already present that can be very dangerous to your ball python. Please be very careful.

-adam

That's why I recommended about 4 months. I kept one to see how long for mold to actually be visible, and it took almost 6 months under my conditions. Like I said, it's mold-resistant, but it is not mold-proof, so prudence is a good idea.

Sounds good Marla .... personally, I wouldn't risk it! :mrgreen:

-adam

Well, Adam, as we know, everyone has different ideas about acceptable risk levels. :shock: You may already have guessed that I am quite the daredevil, living life on the edge. ;)

ROFLAMO .... Marla, YOU ROCK! ... LOL

Sometimes I roll, too, but that's a different story ... ;)

I was wondering how you would clean it out if your snake went to the bathroom in it? Would you have to tear it all apart just to clean it? It's a good idea and very creative how she came up with the idea. It just seems like it would be a pain in the butt to clean and disinfect, even if you coated it with a water resistant product. My humid hide it made out of a 7-layer dip circular(7-8"in diameter and 2" high) container. I have a wash cloth in there that I rinse and wash every other day or so, and all I have to do is pop the lid off of the container. I would really worry about mold in that hide like Marla and Adam said.

Good point Becky! .... Personally I tend to be a fan of keeping things simple and easy to clean. Decorative is great, but I've seen too many decorative cages sometimes get a half a shake at being cleaned because of all the work it invloves. Lets face it, everyone leads busy lives and cleaning is soooo important to keeping a healthy ball python! .... If you can put the time in to have a nice fancy decorated cage and keep it clean thats awesome! ... But, simple works very well too.

-adam

I love simple... Amani's hides are clay pot bottoms and one clay pot broken in half longways and the plastic humid hide, which she has been using the past few days(shedding time). She lives on newspaper too. It's so easy to clean. I just have someone hold her for 5 minutes while I wash the tub out in the bathtub. The only "natural" thing she has in there is this 3-pronged grapevine/log thing. Seems to like it, but she's usually too lazy to get on it :) I'll probably get her a river rock or something to rub on and use the vine for a boa(when I decide the time is right to get one). Yep, Adam, I agree with you 100% on the K.I.S.S. Method. It's just makes my life that much easier. :)

Hello and thank you for the warm welcome.

You can avoid the mold problem by treating the inside of the half log hide with 4-5 coats of polyurethane (clear satin finish). It's what many cage builders use when building cages with untreated wood. Give it a week or two to air dry before introducing it into the cage (until the odor is gone). This was in my original post.

Cleaning is simple. The half log is just sitting on the plastic base. If you want to replace or clean the sphagnum moss, just lift up the hide. That also makes it easy to sanitize as well.

IMHO there's nothing wrong with a plastic box with a hole cut in it, or newspaper for a substrate, but I prefer a natural setting for my animals. Herps are a hobby for me, and their cage is part of that hobby. It's always a toss up between ease of cleaning and esthetics. The more cage furniture you have the more you have to clean.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neumann

You can avoid the mold problem by treating the inside of the half log hide with 4-5 coats of polyurethane (clear satin finish). It's what many cage builders use when building cages with untreated wood. Give it a week or two to air dry before introducing it into the cage (until the odor is gone). This was in my original post.

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Sorry about that, I totally missed it! I feel like a dumb a#$ now!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neumann

IMHO there's nothing wrong with a plastic box with a hole cut in it, or newspaper for a substrate, but I prefer a natural setting for my animals. Herps are a hobby for me, and their cage is part of that hobby. It's always a toss up between ease of cleaning and esthetics. The more cage furniture you have the more you have to clean.

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That's awesome, almost like having two hobbies in one!

-adam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neumann

Greetings,

I've seen some post on this forum regarding humidity chambers so I thought I would share this. My daughter made this natural looking humidity chamber for her anery (corn snake) and photographed it. We also have one for our royal. It's really simple to make and costs next to nothing to make.

Supplies:
An appropriately sized half log hide
A pair of scissors
A piece of paper
A fine point marker
A short length of rubber tubing (medical type)
A semi rigid piece of plastic


Step 1
Trace the outline of the hide base on a piece of paper.

Step 2
Trace the ends of the log hide on the piece of paper.

Step 3
Cut out the oval shaped template from the piece of paper and wrap it around the log making sure it fits neatly and tightly.

Step 4 (example)
The plastic my daughter used was the box from a software package from Costco.

Step 5
Trace your paper pattern onto the plastic.

Step 6
Cut the pattern out of the piece of plastic and fold then ends around your hide to ensure it has a nice snug fit. This will prevent it from drying out as quickly.

Step 7
Use something round to trace an appropriately sized hole on one end of the plastic. The whole should be somewhat larger than your snake at its fattest point.

Step 8
Take a length of medical tubibg and slit it lengthwise from end to end, making sure that you cut straight, without twisting the tubing. Open the slit and slide the tube around the edge of the hole you previously cut in the plastic . This is important so your snake does not cut his belly going in and out of the hide. Finally, place some damp sphagnum moss inside the hide (ZooMed Terrarium moss will do fine). Your snake now has cozy place to hydrate when it needs or wants to.

Be sure the wood has been sanitized by baking it in the oven before introducing it into the cage. If your worried about mold, you can put 4 coats of clear satin polyurithane (sp?) on the inside of it. If you do, be sure and give it about a week to dry so there's no oder left.


Cheers,
Jason

http://lantech.geekvenue.net/snakes/hbox1.jpg

http://lantech.geekvenue.net/snakes/hbox2.jpg[/img]

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Is baking this type of wood safe? What temp and for how long would u bake it at