WOOT!

[Andariel]

Well thanks to everyones advice, and a long chat session last night with Jeanne, Randy, and others Andariel's tank is now stable at 80 cool, 90 hot, and 55% humidty WOOOOOOOT!!!!!

Now I just gotta get her to the vet on saturday to get her lil shot so she feels better then maybe she'll eat for me

THANKS EVERYONE!!

-Chris

[steelsack]

Right on, love it when somebody is able to make thier glass tank work! 8)

[emroul]

That's great to hear, congrats! Now, on to accomplish some feedings, eh? You can do it!

Jennifer

[Marla]

Wonderful! For others' reference, how exactly do you have it setup now so that it's balanced so well? Snyder is sure the vet can help Andariel get interested in eating.

[Ken]

Marla, That setup for Snyder rocks!

Is that multilevel? How did you do that? Give us all the juicy details.

K

[Wizill]

for some reason i thought she had already eaten for you.

[Marla]

Thanks, Ken! It's a Sterilite 4-drawer setup from Wal-Mart (~$18) on which I switched the order of the drawers (it originally had the two small drawers up top). I drilled holes (next time I'll use a soldering iron) for air flow, just one row until I could see how it held humidity. It turns out I should have done two rows, because the humidity is now perfect (52%) with the drawer pulled out 1/8" instead of snug against the frame. I got the floor temp right by adjusting the number of layers of newspaper inside.

To protect against escape, I put 1.5" of velcro to hold the drawer to the frame on each side, just below the drawer slides, which means I need to hold the top steady to open it without disturbing Snyder or spilling water. Under Snyder's drawer, stuck to the bottom, is a pre-fab heat tape UTH (~$15 @ Petco). Inside the drawer is 3 layers of newspaper, one heat rock box (rock is NOT in use but box makes a good hide), one ceramic water dish (~$2 @ Lowe's), one small stone water dish ($? had it for a while), one baked stick from the yard, one found hunk of quartz, and one decorative fishtank stone. Oh, and one digital indoor/outdoor thermometer/hygrometer (~$15 @ Wal-Mart).

There's room under the bottom drawer for a human-style heat pad, which I'll be buying this weekend in preparation for the snake I hope to get next weekend at the reptile show. The back of the drawer-thingy has a handle-hole which is great for running electrical cords through but has to be otherwise blocked from the top snake escaping. The bottom drawer also has two large holes under it suitable for running cords through. The sides of the drawers fit snug against the case, and the snake should not be able to get out that way. I do have a light above the cage and cycle it for photoperiod, but it's not bright inside the drawer, just enough to see.

Hope that was useful!

[Marla]

Doh.

[Andariel]

What i did (and I'll take better pics, tho there are some in my album right now, tommorow) was cover the ENTIRE screen top in duct tape, overlapping just a hair (1/8th"). Then I got the metal globe with the 50W red bulb and cut a hole in the ducttape about 1/8" wider in circumfrence than the globe and put the globe over the exposed screen. That made the humidty SKYROCKET from 35% to 93ish but temps were in mid-low 70's on hot side and 70ish on cool side... so I was like WHOH...

I then switched the 50W red bulb for my 100W CHE and did the same thing. That lowered humidity to about 70% and the the humidity lowered to about 70% and the temps shot up to about 90-95 all over... Again I was like "well this won't do", so I cut a 4"X4" square in the duct tape on the cool side of the tank to allow more air flow to lower temps and lower humidity. It worked perfectly on the humidity but temps dropped a hair to much (75/80). so I put my red 50W in a little side perch light and had it shine thru the 4X4 square, but that made the temps rise to much again...

This is what I finally ended up with (incase you got confused with my trial and error phase):

1) 40 Gallon Breeder tank with screen top (cover it entirely with ducttape).
2) Cut out a circle about 1/8" bigger than the light fixture (a 1/2 globe in my case, see album for pics if u don't know what I'm talking about)
3) Cut a 4X4" square on cool side of tank, but I patched it up to be 3X4".
4) 100w CHE in the 1/2 metal globe.
5) Two 12X12" heating pads, starting at the hot end on medium, and placing the second one directly beside it (in the middle of the tank) on low.

Results:

78 degrees on cool side, 87 on warm at night, and 81-82 on cool and 90 on warm during the day. With a constant humidity of 55% (fluxuates a HAIR, but that probably just the ambient humidity I think more than anything in the tank seeing as nothing in my setup has changed.

(as of now, 13 hours of no change)

[Andariel]

BTW, Will she hasn't eaten from me. I have a tank setup for feeders (currently three.... but i'm gonna have a darn colony of them in a week or so when one gives birth), and I'm getting two more 10 gallon tanks tommorow so I can seperate out my males from females and don't have a HUGE colony of mice.

-Chris