Hello everyone,

I adopted two adult ball pythons that are approximately 10 years old. Each has their own wooden vivarium that is rather large. It's 5 feet long, 2.5 feet tall and 2 feet wide. They are both heated by what appears to be an 80 watt RHP. Temp is controlled by a herpstat 2 near the warm end.

I recently bought a hygrometer - funny story here, the previous owner told me that the herpstat 2 humidity readings are always wrong, and they usually just show 100% or 0%. After some research, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't even measuring humidity. Those figures are for how much power is being applied to the heaters! Anyway, I put this on the cold side because it also has a temp gauge.

The temp from the herpstat is at about 86 and temp on the cold side is about 77.

Where I start getting confused is when I bring out the heat gun. I put one hide underneath the RHP and the top of the hide reaches 99(!). Inside the hide is more like 93 or so. Should I be concerned with the temp on top of the hide? Or any one surface in the tank? If air is 86 on the warm side, and 77 on the cool side... I feel like dropping the temps will make ambient temps too low. But if I leave as is, then the snake could technically bask under the RHP and get too hot. I should note that the entire cold side has the same temp as the ambient air on that side - 77. Majority of surfaces on the warm side only reaches 86-90, but right underneath the RHP it is a particularly warm spot where IR gets absorbed.

The tanks are 5 feet long, so there is plenty of room for the snake to regulate temp (there is a hide on the cold side as well). The temps are set to drop about 6 degrees overnight, and so far I've seen them move from cold to warm and vice versa.