Hi, Im Larissa and we adopted a BP this week. He is about 18" long or so and maybe two thumbs wide. He is beginning to shed.

He came with a 20 gal long tank, screen topper. UTH (exo terra brand) on right side, aspen substrate and a thermometer on the cool side that looks like a sticker. That therm showed 75 temp so I knew we needed another heat source.

Last night we went to Petsmart and bought a set with a therm and hydro meter which we stuck in the center of the tank. We bought a second therm with probe that we placed under hot-hide. So glad we did, it read 117degrees. Ive placed about .5" of newspaper over the UTH and covered with aspen shavings. I also raised the tank bit off the table hoping to disperse some of the heat. It now reads 113. The center therm dial reads 80.

Also bought a 8.5" heat lamp and a 75watt red bulb. Humidity was at 40% with wet towels covered in plastic covering screen on all but center where lamp was. I since added dampened paper towels rolled into tight tubes along edges and and brought that up to 80%. I had moved water bowl to the middle hoping the heat lamp would cause evaporation and improve humidity but it raised temp to 90 so I turned it off.

Help me fix this in a DIY kinda way, we dont have all that much more that can go into snake fixings this week.