Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I got a Dumeril yesterday. I have had a ball python and Central American Boa in the past. I always used newspaper as a substrate before, but I noticed she had trouble with her last shed because there is still some skin there.I wanted to make sure the humidity was up and that doesn't work with newspaper in Las Vegas.

I went to the reptile specialty shop here and the guy recommended the cypress mulch. It works great... for humidity. It stays at 60% just being in there. The problem is the heat. With my reptitherm UTH the temperature does not move at all. It is 78 in my apartment, it reads 78 in the tank. There is a warm spot in the substrate, but the heat does not transfer up at all. I keep hearing people talk about turning theirs down so I bought a thermostat, and instead I am not making near enough heat. It is a 40 gallon tank, and it has the corresponding 40 gallon heater on it. It all works great, if you put your hand on the glass, it is hot. It works.

Is this just the substrate eating up all that heat? Should I add another uth? I don't want to go the route of heat lamp. Is there a special place I should take the temp from? My thermometer is about halfway up the glass on the hot side.

Because it a screen top I placed a sheet over it to hold heat in. That just raises the humidity too high and it barely moved the temp anyway. I am really baffled here because nobody else seems to have this problem.

The snake seems ok because she goes back and forth from hot to cold burying herself on either side.

I have about 1.5 to 2 inches of substrate in there.

Sounds like she's able to bury herself and get her heat as she needs it. To help up the overall temp in the tank try wrapping it in insulation to help hold in any heat as it builds up. Glass is an excellent heat sink and will dissipate the heat really quickly. Having the top not covered at all is also a loss of heat, I would try putting a piece of plastic sheet over at least the portion of the tank the heat is on, leaving some of the screen open to allow the humidity to escape.
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Reptiles Make The World Go Round.

I ended up adding a 100 watt CHE and a fogger. I tried to make it as simple and cheap as possible, but the snakes health comes first.

Everything is perfect now. 78 on the cool side, about 81-85 warm side, and 90 for belly warmth. I have to keep the fogger on about 75% of the time to keep the humidity at 60% so I am sure the zoo med fogger I bought will bow out soon enough. I didn't know it when I bought it, but they aren't exactly known for their reliability.

Randall is correct. Unfortunately glass tanks are not effective cages for large boids that require a rather narrow temperature range (narrow compared to for colubrids).

Glass is not a good insulator, it is a conductor. When the room temp is warm, so is the tank. When the room temp is cold, so is the tank. It can take slot of wattage to heat a glass tank in a cold room. And screen tops are the worst things ever. Definitely not made for snakes. Bearded dragons OK, but not snakes.

The answer is to insulate the tank. My advice is to get pink insulation foam, often sold in 2ft x 2ft squares at Lowes or Home Depot. Tape those on the outside of the glass - all sides. An alternative is to use a product often called "Reflectix" sold at the same stores. It is a roll of bubble wrap coated in shiny metal film. It is really easy to cut and tape to the glass. You can mount reflectix to the inside of the tank to make it really effective. I use it alot because ambient temps in Winter can be a problem without using insulation on my boa cages to some degree.

Next I would spend the money and get a radiant heat panel (RBI makes a nice one, so does Bean Farm (which is the same one as Boaphile). You can lay the heat panel on top of the screen I think.. please ask the seller before you try it. Get a large one. 28W is too small, 40 is better, but the next size up is best.

Finally get a thermostat, a proportional model from RBI, Bean Farm, wherever, all are great.

My last bit of advice if you really want to keep boids - get a plastic cage where you can mount a radiant heat panel inside on the ceiling. You will not be sorry, and you will never look at glass tanks again. Dragons 4 You makes an excellent affordable cage suitable for Dumerils that is 42 inches wide and 21 inches deep. Paul Mitchell Jr sells a line of polystyrene cages that are very affordable as well. Of course, there is always Boaphile. Even a wood cage with a glass front is better than an all-glass tank.

Oh yeah, and cover that blasted screen top with reflectix - all of it except for the heater area. No need for foggers if you reduce ventilation. The requirement of ventilation for snakes is a myth - snakes do best with less ventilation than one would think.

I wish I knew how attainable the melamine or pvc cages are now. When I owned snakes in the past they were far more expensive. Doing a quick google search this time before I got my setup, I still only saw $400 and up. Now, I see boaphile has a good sized cage for $200. My wife still would not have let me but I could have made a melamine cage for under $100.

That will definitely be her next cage setup when she gets older. My goal is to have her in a 4ft cage by the time she is 3ft. As for what I have done now, I used packing tape to seal off most of the screen. I left open a spot for the CME and a smaller one on the other side for ventilation. You do 2 layers of tape. One facing up from the bottom, and one facing down from the top. Using this technique I was able to get rid of the fogger and use the money to buy a thermostat for the CME and an infrared thermometer. I already had one for the UTH.

Using this setup I am able to retain 60% humidity pretty easily. I have the warm side set to between 82-84 with a spot for belly warmth in her hide at 86. The cool side is 78 but she always buries herself in the substrate which is about 75. These temps are easy to maintain in the dessert here in Las Vegas.

So in the end i think I have given her a happy, healthy home until she gets a proper boa tank. Still, tons of people are going to go to a neighborhood pet store chain and get bad advice so this technique should be helpful to those people.

Almost forgot the most important part. I think the biggest reason I was having bad temperature readings was using an analog thermometer and hygrometer. Once I got a digital one that read both, I could see that my temps weren't as bad as I thought. In fact, it tells me I was over heating my previous snakes cages because those analog ones are awful. They just aren't accurate enough. Once I replaced it with the digital one my temperatures read 81 on the warm side and not 78. It was pretty far off on everything.

Good on you for doing what you did. I think your snake will do fine.

If only the glass cage companies would make a model with an all- plastic lid with screened circle cutouts with removable covers. And a small vent on the back of the glass wall. More appropriate for snakes and most geckos.