Humidity

[daziladi]

I need some advice on keeping the humidity up. Previously, I've kept the vivarium pretty wet which caused a bacterial infection. Currently I'm using paper towels at bottom and a large glass vase filled with rocks, water and an air tube to create humidity. I've tried two different types of submersible heating rods (in the same vase with the air tube) but both of them clicked off too fast and didn't create any heat. Here's a photo of what I have... the humidity is falling to 30% shortly after manually misting so the vase/air pump idea isn't working out. I don't want wet-substrate solutions until I am an expert on creating and keeping a bacterial-free environment. Plastic wrap covers 50% of the mesh lid but even that doesn't hold in the moisture, though it helps. The lack of humidity in Las Vegas counteracts anything I've tried so far. I was thinking of ditching the water-vase-air-tube idea and going with a heat lamp resting above the mesh lid and one of those water misting systems I've seen. Will the mister system and heat lamp keep the humidity levels up enough on their own, or should I look into something else?

[Kurt]

You can try using a false bottom in the enclosure. They are pretty good at maintaining humidity. See the red-eye care article to see how to construct one.

[Paul Rust]

You could also use a substrate. Put a few inches of aquarium rock in for drainage and then 3 or 4 inches of coco fibre and then moss or forest floor. Planting live plants will keep humidity up also. I use this setup in all my builds and humidity will go to 100% if I don't use fans on timers to vent it. My picture albums show the substrate fairly well. Good luck.

[Socrates]

You could create a small pool of water, have a pump/filter that has a spray bar (or a tube) that pulls water and spills it over a rocky formation i.e. a homemade waterfall. This plus regular misting, a soil based substrate and live plants should do the trick. O and definitely try placing Plexiglas or some other type of material to cover the screening a bit to decrease the amount of water that can escape. Don't cover up too much though, because you want good ventilation.

[mikeald]

On one of my tanks I use a scrape siding that is cut to snuggly fit the inside lip of the tank. Then cut two circle holes to snuggly fit the lighting fixtures and added some metal grading, use to cover gutters, on the bottom of the light fixtures to hold the lights. This was cheap at Home Depot, siding scrape $0.71(where is the cent symbol on the keyboard), metal grading $7.92. I even had Home Depot cut the scrape siding to the size I needed and it was free. If this doesn't work for you, you're out less than $10.

[daziladi]

Thank you for the advice. Matt wrote a how-to on his vivarium setup so I'll be trying that out. There's an empty 10 gallon aquarium out back that I can use as a temp home until I get the 20 gallon built and it should only take a few days at most. Lesson learned, a vase of water with an air stone doesn't increase the humidity.