Ball python tank heating issues

[dannyp1542]

Hi, I have a ball python tank, with a screen top, and heating lights, one for day and one for night, the one I have for day is a brighter light, if I leave it on for too long, the heat of the tank will get really high, usually around 90, maybe higher at times and the humidity will go way down to like 40%, I turn it off and it does back to normal, but then the heat drops increasingly and humidity rise to around 80%, how can I get it to stay more consistent in temperature and humidity? I am a new owner so I'm still learning.

[redshepherd]

I assume your lights are the only heat source? Is it a CHE or just a light? And what are you using to measure those temps?

You'll want to get a lamp dimmer for the CHE.

If 90 is the ambient temp throughout the tank, it's way too high.

How does the humidity get to 80? What are you using as substrate?

Can you post some pictures of your setup?

[dannyp1542]

The lights I have are incandescent light bulbs, right now I'm going back and forth with turning the light on and off to maintain the temperature around mid80s, I'm using a aspen chip bedding for the time being, whenever I turn the light off that is when humidity will go up, and when it is on, it drops to like 50, I want to try getting the humidity up to about 60-70 though, that I read is better for him overall, maybe switch to a different bedding? Any suggestions? And maybe a more permanent way to maintain temp? Since I work it will be near impossible for me to always be turning light on and off continually

[dannyp1542]

I'm still new and can't figure out how to post pictures though. It says I'm not aloud to post attachments

[dannyp1542]

If you go to my profile I have a pic of the setup

[redshepherd]

A light dimmer should still work for that, and you can adjust it to the middle.

You'll actually want to get an Acurite digital thermometer/hygrometer, instead of that round analog one. Those can be extremely inaccurate, basically making them useless.

Are you using a temp gun to get your temperatures?

Check out this tank setup guide. A pretty good guide to stick to.
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...-With-Pictures!

[Coluber42]

One thing to know is that heat and humidity are related, because the humidity we are talking about is "relative humidity" - meaning how much moisture is in the air relative to how much it can hold* before it condenses, and the warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold. So the same moisture content will be a higher percent humidity when the air is cool than when it warms up.

But that said, do you have a digital hygrometer? Those dial ones are notoriously out of whack. If you don't have a digital one, get one of those indoor/outdoor Acurite ones; they are cheap and way more accurate. But one thing I've found about aspen bedding is that it has a fair amount of moisture in it right out of the bag, and the humidity in my enclosure will go right up when I first put it in there, but after a day or two it reaches some equilibrium and stays more stable. If you've only just set things up, see what it looks like in a couple of days.

You will also need some sort of heat source that you can control better than just on/off. You can get a lamp dimmer for the incandescent bulbs you have, but you'll make your life easier if you can get a heat source that you can put on a thermostat. Ceramic heat emitters are bulbs that get really hot but don't make visible light.
My personal favorite are radiant heat panels, which spread the heat over a much larger surface so no part of it ever gets hot enough to burn if you touch it. So it can be mounted inside the lid of the cage (including under a screen top on a tank, with minimal extra modification). The other benefit of that is that if you find that your humidity is too low, you can cover the screen top with foil to reduce the amount of ventilation and retain humidity, without having to leave an opening for a lamp bulb.

But in the meantime, does the "nighttime" bulb get you to the temperature you want? If so, just use that one all the time. The snake will be able to tell it's daytime by other light in the room. See how things stabilize if you just use that, and then see what adjustments you need to make.
Also, 90 isn't bad as long as it's just one spot and the whole tank isn't 90. ideally you want a temperature gradient from 80-ish to 90-ish, so if you have a lamp at one end you probably have that. That's another reason for getting an indoor/outdoor thermometer (one side of the tank is "indoor" and the other side is "outdoor") so you can tell.



*this is an approximation of how it really works, but it's good enough for our purposes.