New owner needing help!

[WhompingWillow]

My wife surprised me with a Coral Glow BP and it is absolutely beautiful and I can't believe she did this however I wasn't prepared for it. Luckily the breeder gave her a small tub, couple hides, water bowl and a foot of 3'' heat tape. I went out and bought a zilla thermostat and had left over temp and humidity readers from my crested geckos i keep. So far I have had the snake about 10 days. Here are a few things I could use some advice on....

1. I'm getting inconsistent heat from the heat tape. I'm seeing a 15degree change over a foot of the heat tape (probe reads 92 and farther away will read like 108 directly on the heat tape, not in the tub). Went on reddit and was told that I need to get a Herpstat 1 since the on/off thermostats don't work all that well with heat tape. Is this true?
2. I keep the room around 73-75degrees with a floor heater for my crested geckos. How can I supplement some heat to the cold side to make it more like 78-80degrees? Could I use a another strip of heat tape and set it for 80degrees to add heat to the cold side? Could I somehow use a CHE or RHP above the tub to increase the ambient temp inside (however this will most likely increase my humidity which is issue #3). I need some help with this since I can't increase the room temp any more due to my Crested's.
3. woke up this morning to find that the little guy decided to play in his water and soak the paper towels I am using for substrate. The humidity in the tub was close to 80%. So I wiped down the tub and cleaned it. How can I prevent the humidity from getting that high again? I'm thinking more holes in the tub for air flow possibly?
4. So I was told to start it with pinkies even though the breeder said it was on hoppers (live). I thawed out a pinkie last night hoping to feed it today and man it is certainly small compared to the girth of the snake....Should I go back and get something bigger like a fuzzy? Not sure why the breeder told me to feed a pinkie when it was getting live hoppers.....

Any help would be great

I'm also a beginner, but here are some things I've researched/experienced:

1. How do you have the probe set up/where is it placed? Is the probe wedged between the heat tape and bottom of the tub? What kind of thermostats do you currently use? This might be obvious, but there's a difference between a thermostat and thermometer. A thermostat regulates temps, a thermometer just reads them. You definitely need a thermostat with heat tape.

2. Someone else will hopefully be able to chime in more on the ambient air temperature in tubs. I didn't have much luck with them and changed back to tanks. What I've read is that typically UTHs and heat tape don't warm the air, just the substrate. So you could put another on the cool side and set the thermostat to whatever it needs to be to get the substrate to 80 degrees. I have seen photos of where people have poked some holes or screened part of the top of a tub to use a CHE, but you'd need to be careful with placement to not melt the plastic and would need a thermostat.

3. More holes = less humidity. You can do a few more at a time to control how low the humidity gets. I've also found that more holes = less retained heat, so keep that in mind.

4. Pinky, whether rat or mouse, is definitely too small. Most likely a mouse hopper or small rat fuzzy is needed. Here's a screenshot of a chart I've found helpful:


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