I do not normally leave my guages in the enclosure.


Once you have the thermostats correct then you will only have to test the environment when something changes.

For now. I would remove your snake (have someone play with him for a while) then I would put the probe on the surface where the snake will be (on top of the carpet) take readings at various places to make sure that you have a warm side (~90) and a cool side (~80) -- leave the probe in the same spot for a few minutes to make sure that you have a good reading. If your temps are right then you can rely on you thermostats to keep the temps regulated, and you can remove the accurite.

Since I use aspen, I have my probe taped to the bottom of the enclosure. Because my snake likes to move the aspen around so that he can rest on to the bottom of the enclosure.

Once you get rid of your mite/tick problem I would get rid of the carpet. It is a lot harder to clean than newspaper. Or aspen where you just discard the entire load every so often.

I hope this helps.