Too much hummidity?

Vengeance · 10-13-04, 08:04 AM

When is the humidity too much humidity? Reason I'm asking is that I've made my Rubbermaid’s look like Swiss cheese on the sides all the way around and placed the water bowl on the cool side of the cage and I still can't get the humidity to drop below 70%. I don't want to put too many more holes in the cage for fear that when winter comes and the air dries out quite a bit the humidity in the cages will drop naturally. So if proper temps are maintained is living in a 70% - 80% ambient humidity going to cause me problems in the long run and if so any suggestions on how to keep the humidity down? The substrate is newspaper and I've never misted the cages.

Phrasty · 10-13-04, 11:14 AM

Just a suggestion, but can you put the holes in the rubbermaid for now to get the humidity down, then when winter comes and the air dries out along you could just cover back up the holes (with a glue gun or something of the sort, people are gonna say to stay away from tape) Just a Thought..

Phrasty

Jeff_Favelle · 10-13-04, 11:33 AM

More heat = drier cage.

Vengeance · 10-13-04, 12:12 PM

Can't heat the room cause it's also a spare bedroom, the cages are hooked up to a thermostat so it controlls the temps, the warm side is allways 95 during the day, 85 during the night. Just using an UTH. Without heating the room, I don't see anyway of adding more heat to the room.

arkuden · 10-13-04, 01:44 PM

too much humidity can lead to RI or other complications. When winter comes i would add a humid hide if the humid. starts dropping by a lot.

Vengeance · 10-13-04, 02:20 PM

From the short amount of research I've done, RI seems to be a problem that arises when a combination of problems exist.

http://www.anapsid.org/rti.html

The ambient air humidity may be high, but the news paper is still dry and the sides of the cage doesn't fog up, so I can assume it isn't overly moist in the cage, temperatures are kept correctly with the thermostat. There is a day and night drop with thermal gradient. RI could be a possibility, but unlikely, I think I'll take Phrasty's suggestion and drill more holes and fill them in as necessary.

Artemis · 10-13-04, 03:20 PM

Thats not really tragically high humidity for a ball, but you don't want it to get any higher than that. Some people speculate that higher humidity stimulates a stronger feeding response in BPs, also.

Don't worry too much-

Artemis

Jeff_Favelle · 10-13-04, 06:27 PM

Why the drop in temps at night?

Vengeance · 10-13-04, 07:42 PM

I think I asked this question before but never got an answer.

It's a breeding trio, so I've been day and night cycling them since I got them because at some point they will be used for breeding. Not this year, most likely not next year either, but because at some point they will be used for breeding I'm day and night cycling. But since they won't be used in a breeding project for the next year or so is it necessary to cycle them?

MouseKilla · 10-13-04, 09:13 PM

Yeah, no night drop is necessary, it's something that is out there in the care sheets and even the BP manual I think but it's a discredited practice.

The trouble with rubbermaids in a room that is not heated is that you can crank that hotspot up to 100 if you want and the cool side will often still be too cool. In non-heated rooms you are better off using custom cages or even (forgive me Jeff!) glass because it's much easier to add a secondary heat source to them should you need to bring up the ambient temps.

I would also recommend that you double check your humidity levels with a different electronic hygrometer to make sure your numbers are right, that sounds insanely high to me.

Jeff_Favelle · 10-13-04, 09:59 PM

What he said.

If you're not breeding, don't bother cycling.

Vengeance · 10-14-04, 07:42 AM

I think another point was made on this forum a while back that the cycling may also stimulate feeding response. Not sure how true it is, or if there is any fact behind it but I've had these three for about a month and being cycled this whole time and they have an awsome feeding response. I never saw this kind of a feeding response from my first Ball python, but that could also have allot to do with quality of stock. But does anyone have any opinions on cycling and feeding?

If there is no point to cycling unless breeding shouldn't be much of a problem to set both the day and night time temps the same on the thermostat. But just curious to see if there are any pro's or cons to cycling when not breeding.

I've got 3 digital hydrometers in all 3 cages, and they all read in and around the same. I can try and switch them around into diffrent cages and see if I get the same readings. I'll take some pictures of my setup see if there are any further suggestions that anyone could offer.