Crittercrazy,

. Paul and David have posted some good advice. I think you need to totally rethink how to keep your BRB and what you are doing. You are using a heat light to overheat a moderate temperature snake which is nocturnal. It seems like a total mistake to me. The light will cause stess and may cause the snake to hide from the light in a location in the cage which is the wrong temperature. The too hot condition is evaporating loads of water out of the cage. Those puppy pee pads are cold due to all of the evaporation of moisture from them. If you will stop the evaporation it will be easy to keep the cage humid and warm. If you will change the cage so that all the moisture is not escaping from it you will find that it will take much less heat to keep the cage at the right temperature and also will require much less work adding moisture to the cage. If you keep the tank you should cover between 95 and 99% of the screen. You should also get rid of the heat light. There are simple ways to control the amount of heat from a simple heat pad. You could use a rheostat to control the amount of electricity going to the heat pad or you could provide insulation between the heat pad and the bottom of the cage. It seems like the suggestion to switch to a rubbermaid type container would actually be easier than modifying the tank. A very small heat pad controlled correctly can keep one end of the cage warm which is all you need. Little BRBs will overheat and dehydrate at temperatures above the mid 80s. Ideally a cage should have a temperature gradient from the low or mid seventies in the cool end to the very very low 80s in the warm end.

Jeff



>>Hi,

>>Don't know if anyone remembers. But I'm the one who was looking into buying a BRB a few months back. Well, I got my baby. A gorgeous little 8 week old female from Randy Wright's reptiles. She's a doll. And a great eater. Her name is Nyoka (means "snake"

>>

>>I guess not too uncommon to BRB keepers, I am having a little trouble keeping the humidity high enough. The cage is always wet (unfortunatly the humidity won't stay high if the cage is just damp, so it always ends up being very, very soggy). So far humidity ranges from 90% when the fogger is on, to 60% when I haven't misted in a couple hours. I'de like to find a happy medium where the cage can just be moist, not swampy, and the humidity can be higher at the same time.

>>

>>I've got a 20 gallon tank. Lid is half glass/half mesh. Mesh side is covered with acrylic leaving just enough opening for the heat light. I did have a heating pad, but it stopped working. And I wasn't thrilled with the way it heated the ground to what felt like too hot, but didn't warm the air at all.

>>

>>The hot side of the tank (which she rarely goes to) ranges from 86-90. The cooler side goes from 75-85 depending on the time of day.

>>

>>I have a bubbling bowl which adds some moisture to that corner, but does nothing for the rest of the cage. I bought a small pump to add a running water feature to the cage, but that made it way too wet everywhere (an inch of water at the bottom of the tank). So I took that out and instead put in a fogger. Which is absolutly awesome. The problem is, it only "fogs" for about 15 minutes max. Then, the water level drops and it shuts off. So, to effectively get it to work I have to add more water contstantly. :

>>

>>I do mist the cage twice a day. But I'm worried it's not enough. And I don't want to always have to do that. After all, that is why I keep snakes. They're low maintenance. (yeah, right LOL)

>>

>>I was using paper towels but they weren't absorbant enough as a substrate, so I switched to puppy pee-pads. They're ok. But once they're wet they seem to cool off a lot.. so the air is warm, but it seems like the ground is always cool?

>>

>>Anyways, I was hoping someone would know of an affordable way to get maybe an automatic sprayer/mister/fogger thing which I can set to turn on multiple times per day, so that I only have to tend to watering and all that once a day if possible. I can't figure how to do that. Likewise, anyone know where to get an affordable thermostat to hook the light and a heating pad to? I was told you can get them "anywhere" for 10 bucks. The only thermostats I've found are at pet stores for about $50!

>>

>>Thanks for any help you can provide. Sorry this was so long. I just love my baby and want to get everything right!

>>I'm going to crosspost this on the Boa forum since I'm not sure how active this one is. I haven't been here in a long time)

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