Humidity Control

[kthleenus]

Hello again!

Thanks to everyone for the quick advice on my last post! I'm going to keep a close eye on Apollo's cut and I'll give an update when I see some progress, possibly after he sheds.

Going through random forum post in my free time, I actually thought of another thing I could use some help with. I'm having a hard time keeping a constant humidity in his habitat. It fluctuates a lot between 40% and 70% and I know 40% is waaayyyy too low, and it is kinda making me nervous because he hasn't shed with me yet but I'm guessing it is going to be soon since he is young. I have him in a 20-gallon long terrarium with a screen lid and cypress as a substrate. I have a water dish in the middle of the setup. I also spray down his cage 2-3 times a day and I keep a humidifier near his cage. It usually hits around 70% if I have the humidifier on full blast for too long but even turning it down the slightest bit causes the humidity to fall too much again.
Any idea on what might help?

[BluuWolf]

Well there are a few tips for keeping the humidity up in a glass tank, it’ll be hard to keep it from fluctuating a bit between sprays but you can keep it from going too low.

I don’t know if you already have the screen covered in some way but if not that will help to keep the humidity from escaping. There are a few ways to go about it. The two easier ways that I have done is one to put a dish towel over the screen top, making sure to leave some space for ventilation. Another way that a lot of people do is cover the top partially with foil. I would cut out cardboard to the size of the lid then cut out a space for the heat lamp or CHE or whatever you use for ambient temps and another rectangular gap on the opposite side to allow ventilation. I found a mixture of both methods used to work good for me, placing the damp towel underneath the foil.

Another good thing for keeping in humidity is moss. I would mix moss into the substrate as well as leave a little on top and make a little hedge of sorts around three walls of the tank and spray those down when I sprayed they tank.

Lastly I would have two wash clothes that I would put on top of the hides, usually just on the hot side but sometimes on the cold side as well if they were in shed or something. Just take out the rag and rewet it every other day or so and spray it down when you spray the tank.

I understand the troubles of humidity in a glass tank XD It’s a struggle


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[Virago]

you can add a humid hide in his tank when it goes through the shed process an keep up with spraying, moss, a pump sprayer or fogger might help.
Or could switch to a tub, they are super cheap, easy to keep humidity and temps an in my opinion the snakes like it better because the tub itself is kinda like a big hide. That's why I went the tub route when i got my BP, my room is super dry an very cold. Tubs are ugly tho, still waiting for my AP cage to come.

[CloudtheBoa]

Spraying and misting will create wild fluctuations in humidity levels, because they're not actually raising the humidity. They may coat everything in a little bit of moisture, and the humidity reading will be higher while it's spraying, but it's not actually putting moisture into the air. As soon as you or the machine stops spraying, all the moisture will settle onto something.

The best way to raise humidity is reduce ventilation and increase volume and surface area of moisture evaporation. You want to cover, or replace, the screen with a non-porous material, such as Saran wrap, aluminum foil, or plexiglass. Then, you want to replace the bedding with high humidity beddings. Cypress mulch is about worthless for humidity in my experience, because when it dries out, it actually repels water. You want a bedding like coco coir, coco chips, or sphagnum moss. Cypress mulch and peat moss are also unrenewable resources, and their use should be avoided, especially when being used for mulching. Snake bedding makes little impact on the clearing of cypress forests, but many people do buy those big bags of no float mulching cypress, and thus still create demand. Those forests cannot currently replenish at all, and have a very important ecological function for the US and potentially worldwide. Peat moss has similar problems, but the easier to grow sphagnum does not. I believe you can even grow the moss in captivity!

Once you change the bedding, your humidity habits may have to change, depending on if those modifications alone were enough or not. I use EcoEarth, and I just pour water directly into the bedding instead of wasting time with a sprayer or mister. Then I mix it up to evenly spread the moisture. My big 6' cages can take up to 10+ gallons, my T12's usually only use maybe a gallon, and my tubs use a few cups of water. As the water evaporates out of the bedding, it provides all of your humidity without further work beyond re-wetting the bedding when it dries out again. I only need to do this maybe once every 1-2 weeks.

If you have problems with mold this way, it's because the bedding isn't being heated enough to evaporate the moisture quick enough. Adding more ventilation, or using an ambient heater should help here. I normally only have mold problems in my tub set ups with flexwatt, I have yet to have those same problems with CHEs or RHPs. Adding a chip-like bedding to EcoEarth may also help.

If you use sphagnum moss, what I would do is dip the moss into the water, squeeze in as much moisture as possible, then lift it back out of the water and squeeze the excess out before putting it back into the enclosure. Repeat as needed.