Hi there,

I need some advice.

I have been in the possession of a ball python for 1,5 months now, and things are not going as smoothly as planned.
my bp is currently just out of the shedding process, but has still retained shed on its head and neck. Also he showed signs of dehydration.
My humidity has always been around 65%, and I sprayed extra water into the substrate (exo terra coco husk) to bump it up to 85% when the bp showed signs of going into shed.
I am not sure what to change in the husbandry, but i am still facing some problems that might have something to do with the bad shedding process;

For my heat supply I am using a UTH connected to a on-off thermostat. I routed the probe of the thermostat together with a probe of a thermometer via the back of the enclosure (50 gallon/glass) to the bottom of the hide.
This goes in order of; UTH, glass, thermostat/meter probes, paper towel, substrate. The problem that i am facing is that I cant supply sufficient heat, even with the thermostat on max (35 C/95 F).
The temperature gun still measures around 27 C/80 F on the hot spot. To battle this, I decreased the substrate where the hide placed on, so the paper towel is mostly visible, and heat should be able to reach the surface more.
With the decreased substrate, almost no coco husk is left inside the hide. Therefore, humidity is not retained and the humidity in the hide is way lower than the rest of the enclosure. Since the snake is mostly laying here, this is not good.
The other half of the enclosure is room temperature. I am still looking for a solution to this, because my room does not reach 25 degrees. I dont think this has a connection to the shedding problem though.

I cant seem to find a good balance between heat and humidity. To retain humidity in the enclosure overall, I placed a towel over 75% of the tank cover.
I supplied him with a humidity box filled with the same substrate but way more saturated.
This morning I also bathed him in luke warm water, sadly without result.
I bought a plastic tub (15L) in case things stay bad and a new enclosure is nesessary.

I want the best for this animal, and right now things are not going great.

Please let me know if you have any advice!

Thanks in advance.