heat panel question

[GyGbeetle]

I have a question that I hope won't make people face palm when they read it. Ok, so all of our tanks have been all glass with UTH, no therm to regulate (not really needed). We are going to be upgrading the entire collection with Animal Plastics cages over the next year. In an effort to expedite this process, my husband fell upon a sale of a boaphile 6 foot enclosure (not really the same thing as AP, but it serves a similar purpose).

I know nothing about these types of cages, and know nothing about heating. Before we start populating this particular cage with a snake, I would like to hear some expert advise on heating.

We purchased a really nice, never-been-used heating panel along with the cage (it was $25, can't beat that deal). The guy we bought it from said the snakes can sit *on* the heat panel, but we were told otherwise from some trusted keepers. So if the snake can't sit on the heating panel, where does it go in the tank? I know our snakes all like belly heat, so should I also include some other belly heat in the cage? It seems like it would be a lot of heat to do 2 sources, but this is a 6 foot cage. We were thinking about putting our burmese python in it, as she is getting bigger and girthier than our retics at this stage; retics can wait another 6 months to get into their own AP cages, or longer at their current growth rates.

Also bought a 3' x 18" x 20" boaphile cage at the same time. We currently have a UTH as the heating source, and the hot side gets around 88 F, cold gets around 75 F. We have our columbian rainbow in that one. it doesn't seem like it's heating well though. Any advice on that would be greatly appreciated.

please note, humidity is poor right now, because everything is on paper towels. Everyone always asks about humidity, and to be honest, it usually isn't a problem when we put our substrate in. We mist at least once a day; we have tropical snakes that require that extra humidity. But until we are sure our mites are completely 100% gone, which will be probably another 2 weeks, they will stay on those stupid paper towels.

Please ask questions because I don't really know what else to say about this, and I really could use the advice.

Thanks in advance!