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I just picked up a new brb baby from the Atlanta show......

I have him in a large melamine cage with two sliding glass doors on the front. I was heating the tank with a human heating pad, with a piece of 12x12 ceramic tile on top and cypress mulch as a substrate. Humidity and heat were fine, but it is almost to find him to get him out to handle him. I also noticed the tile was getting too hot, even with the pad on the low setting, so I turned it off and added an infered heat bulb inside (cage was made with light fixture inside). Heating is good 88 degress or so, but humidity is dropping way too low. I am thinking of removing the mulch completely and using newspaper with a couple of spots with wet moss to help with humidity. It seems like much less trouble than to rake through the mulch every time I want to get the little fella out, which sometimes scares him. What do you think?

Thanks in advance.

I think if your ambient temp is 88 degrees it is too hot in the enclosure. I also use cypress mulch and the snakes seem to like to hide in it. I think that is a normal behavior and always put enough mulch in the enclosure so they can hide. I have not had any trouble keeping up humidity. I use a hide filled with spaghnum moss that is soaked to capacity and place my water bowl fully on the under tank heater for my adults.The June born baby is kept inside a larger enclosure in a sterilite container half on paper towels, half on moss with the warmest place about 82 degrees or less and humidity above 80 percent.
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"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer

Suntzu,
. If your cage temperature is 88 degrees that is too hot. If one heating device is making it that hot the heating device probably has a dangerously high surface temperature. Heating devices have to be controlled, usually with a proportional thermostat so that they keep the cage at the right temperature and do not allow the heater to be too hot. It only takes time for a snake to find everything in it's cage and if the heater is hot it will burn the snake. The 88 degree temperature is probably evaporating all the moisture out of the cage. Look at all the past posts on this forum about BRBs in cages seeking the area of the cage that is from 75 to 81 degrees. The snakes are telling us what temperature they need.
Jeff

>>I just picked up a new brb baby from the Atlanta show......
>>
>>I have him in a large melamine cage with two sliding glass doors on the front. I was heating the tank with a human heating pad, with a piece of 12x12 ceramic tile on top and cypress mulch as a substrate. Humidity and heat were fine, but it is almost to find him to get him out to handle him. I also noticed the tile was getting too hot, even with the pad on the low setting, so I turned it off and added an infered heat bulb inside (cage was made with light fixture inside). Heating is good 88 degress or so, but humidity is dropping way too low. I am thinking of removing the mulch completely and using newspaper with a couple of spots with wet moss to help with humidity. It seems like much less trouble than to rake through the mulch every time I want to get the little fella out, which sometimes scares him. What do you think?
>>
>>Thanks in advance.