Viewing Tank - help with substrate ideas

[Snoopyslim]

We finally got Valentine into her new and fabulous home. It's an amazing viewing cage and gives her waaaay more space.

We were using the coco husk in our tank before but it has the grated lid so it was necessary to keep the humidity up. Well now that we put the coco husk in her new cage the humidity is just way to high. Is there anything (besides leaving the tank open which we have been doing) that we can do to absorb the humidity? Just a temporary until we figure out what substrate to purchase.

We are going to switch to a new substrate - we dislike the aspen bedding and were thinking of switching to the repti-bark...any positive or negative reviews on the repti-bark? Or any other ideas? (not into paper towel or newspaper since it's a viewing cage).

Thanks in advance!

[usaf21stsf]

The reptibark definitely keeps humidity better than the aspen but I haven't used coconut husk so I'm not entirely sure how it compares. Aspen is pretty bad at keeping humidity though.

[chrid16371]

What's is your humidity at with the coco husk?

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[enoughbubbles456]

You can use any substrate you want, it doesn't matter if it doesn't keep the humidity.

I provide a humid hide for both my royals, my female is always in it but my new royal not so much as I say he is new to still getting used to everything,.. it took my female 2 weeks to figure out where the whole was haha

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[Beryl]

For our tanks (glass display) we noticed that just aspen was too dry and kept terrible humidity so we mixed it with the coconut husk about 50/50 and right away we noticed our BP's were much happier and the humidity was much better, plus we don't have to water it down as much. The aspen helped make it lighter and fluffier so they could burrow more

[Snoopyslim]

What's is your humidity at with the coco husk?

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Once we close the doors it jumps back up to 99 and the doors will actually fog up if left unattended for 8 hours. We were hoping the husk would dry out a bit but it just really retains the moisture so well which was great for our old cage but we have officially decided to switch to the repti-bark. It looks nice and seems to have decent reviews. I hate aspen.

[HanabiraAsashi]

In my experience, if you just use the coconut husk, it comes extremely moist and dries out in the tank after a few days. My glass tank has a closed lid, and fresh coconut husk would send my humidity over 90%. What I ended up doing was getting a tub and poking holes all over it and using that to dry out substrate to be used in tanks as needed. That way the humidity stays int he 60 area.

[chrid16371]

Wow 99!!! Only thing you could do if you wanted to use coco husk still would be to dry it out first and then take a dry humidity reading then mist a little and wait 15 minutes for hygrometer to adjust and repeat until you reach desired humidity. Depending on the drying process you decided to do it wouldn't take to long. If you like the looks and function of the reptibark then it would save you the time but if the coco husk is more visually appealing to you in a display cage then I would take the time to dry it.

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[HanabiraAsashi]

What sucks imo is that I love the look of the coconut husk when its has that nice deep rich brown color.. but when it dries out, it just looks meh. I was a little disappointed the first time I used it and it turned to a light brown dirt. But it definitely needs to be dried in advance or you will get fogged glass. Picture of the enclosure?

[Snoopyslim]

What sucks imo is that I love the look of the coconut husk when its has that nice deep rich brown color.. but when it dries out, it just looks meh. I was a little disappointed the first time I used it and it turned to a light brown dirt. But it definitely needs to be dried in advance or you will get fogged glass. Picture of the enclosure?

I agree with you completely - we always had rich with moisture before and looks nicer when it's a rich deep colour. I also don't like the idea of Valentine ingesting it once it's dry it acts like a dust almost. I wouldn't want to breathe dust in all day so letting it dry out that much isn't an option either lol I think the reptibark looks pretty nice I just worry about lost urates and poops blending in or burrowing underneath it ...