Well I recently bought all sorts of stuff to set up an enclosure for a ball python I will be getting soon. I bought the Acu-Rite digital thermometer/humidity reader and I bought a 10 gallon glass tank and compressed coconut husk substrate and an under tank heating pad.

I did a test with the heating pad and thermometer in the empty tank (no substrate, water dishes or anything) and the hot side got up to 105 degrees (I was just testing to see how hot the pad could actually get). Well I put substrate in the tank and did a test again and this time with the probe of the thermometer on top of the substrate in the enclosure the temperature was 80 degrees...even though the heating pad was up around 100 degrees. What's the deal? The heating pad is producing more than enough heat, but the heat is not getting through the substrate to the surface of it....how do I fix this? I know....surface temperature in the enclosure needs to be like 92 degrees