I have my ball python in a naturalistic vivarium. It has deep substrate and a Pothos plant and 2 weeping fig ficus plants and a large water dish. I was overwatering the substrate and soaking it and I realized the ball python was starting to show signes of scale rot due to the wet substrate i thought. The scales were getting flakey if that makes sense. I stopped soaking the soil and it seemed to dry out. I actually havent watered the substrate in a month and the plants still seem fine and the substrate seems dry. Its mostly choir, reptibark, and peat moss, with a top layer of dry oak leaves. There is a drainage layer and sand mixed in. I remove the waste because the springtails are slow at best.

Now when I put the hygrometer inside the tank, the reading gives 60% humidity. Yet when I put the hygrometer probe inside the hide on the cool side of the tank it shows 90%. It has a probe to measure humidity. I put a plate under the cool hide because that was so excessive and it cut it down some to like 70%. I assume its coming through the soil. Most sites talk about 60% humidity, but my question is, is that ambient humidity, like measured with a gague on the back of the tank or is there where the snake actually spends all its time, which is inside the hide? It shed recently and i want to make sure the clean scales stay that way. It confuses me because the shed was broken up, but i dont know if thats because of dryness, which confuses the heck out of me given the circumstances or because it got injured feeding recently and has a scab on its back, which complicated things.

Please let me know where i should be mrasuring the humidity. Thanks so much 🐍