Quote Originally Posted by jclaiborne View Post
Here are some thoughts. Ditch the mercury vapor bulb and get a lower wattage flood bulb from a hardware store. Here is an example for comparison. A 35 Watt flood bulb (PAR 30) from 10 in away give me a 115F basking spot for my Tegu. Get a fluorescent fixture (T5HO) to provide UVB, that will help with killing the humidity. In addition I was going to suggest topsoil until I re read your post. Quite honestly you could dig up some dirt from your backyard and mix that in, it is pretty common practice in the large lizard community. If you are uncomfortable with that look for some DG (decomposed granite) at a hardware store and mix that in with your substrate that should help give it some moisture retention, plus when you do get topsoil you can just add it to what you already have.
Grounds pretty frozen. I don't think I could dig any up. I can come spring time, lol.

Well, the thing is that I'm building a big 7 foot wooden enclosure for the tort. I already have a lot of the supplies for it, including a very large RHP that is going to span the top. But, I can use a flood bulb and fluorescent fixture in that. They're just so expensive! I'll have to save up for them. The fixture I had for my beardie was a T8 and 10.0 Reptisun bulb and it cost $127 with shipping. Gotta save up for that a little bit, lol. The little guy just has to be in this rubbermaid until it's finished.

I think tomorrow when I give him a bath, I'm going to take the top layer out and mix it up with water and readd it.