Hi,

We have recently "inherited" two BPs (Sid and Nancy, one male, one female) that my sister could no longer take care of. Our original intent was to give them to a friend of ours who is into Herps big-time, but after we got then we decided that they were pretty cool and decided to keep them.

Sid and Nancy are both around 3-3.5 ft long and when we got them they were in a (I think) 20gal reptile tank. My mom had given us a 48x24x18 fish aquarium and we decided that Sid and Nancy would be happier in the larger tank so we bought a screen top and moved them in. Sid didn't seem to care too much but Nancy went on about a month long fast. She did eat this last weekend so I'm feeling a little better about that, but I do have another concern. We have a large dog dish in the tank that we keep water in and they have both taken to burrowing under the dish (we use ReptiBark for the substrate) and staying under there. I haven't seen them out even when I get up at night and check.

Based on what I have been reading I do believe that we don't have the temp/humidity right in the tank and we're going to get some temp and humidity gauges today so we can get that under control. Finally the actual question:

Is the new tank too large for them? We have some branches and some half-logs in the cage and a heating pad under one end but they don't seem to care about any of that. The water bowl is directly in the center of the cage. My current plan is to remove the water bowl and set it directly on the glass bottom so they can't burrow under it, but I don't want to stress them out if it's the cage size that is making them seek the smaller space under the bowl.

Sorry for the lenght of this but I wanted to make sure I got as much detail in as I could. I appreciate you guys helping us newbies out. Thanks.