Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my humidity seems to have dropped and i do not no why it has staid around 57% now it has dropped to 34%. i have a cup under the heat sorce with moss and water to get humidity.i have misted down the cage and it has rison to 47% i do not no what is going on. i also have a towel on top of the cage to keep the humidity in.

towels absorb moisture...use plastic and just leave smaller spots for ventalation if you dont have side ventalation. foggers work awesome...they are like 40$ at a petco and you can often get them at swaps. They also look sweet. Depending on where you live will also have something to do with it. In Illinois you cannot keep humidity up for crap in the winter.

As you are currently using, a bowl with saturated paper towels, aspen shavings, or spagnum moss, setting over the under cage heat source, usually works quite well to keep the humidity up. However, as stated in the previous response, if the cage has a screen top covered by a towel, you are probably losing a fair amount.
Another possibility is that your humidity gauge is not functioning properly. A way to check any humidity gauge is to saturate a handful of paper towels and place them in a clear gallon size plastic bag with about half an inch of room temp. water standing in the bottom after the saturated towels are in the bag. Place the whole humidity gauge or probe, depending on type, in the bag and seal it with a twist tie. Keep the gauge above the water and the saturated paper towels. Wait about 10 minutes and check the gauge reading. It should be reading between 95 and 100% relative humidity. If not, adjust appropiately if it has an adjustment screw. If it is reading 5 or 10% low, and you can't adjust, you can just take this into account and add that much to any reading. If off by much more than 10% to 15%, I would look at replacing the gauge.

Kelly

thanx a bunch turns out it was broken. i used your garbage bag idea and it came up 62% so i threw it out and got out a nother one i have 7 extraones on hand for things like this. thnax a bunch
CrazyCody

No problem at all. I had a feeling that it might have been having problems going by the readings you were getting.

Kelly

My ATB cage never gets above 50%...its an obvious broken one since that cage is my most humid. Those 2 dollar tempurature and humidity guages combined from menards that are a very long oval shape are the best I have ever used.