Humidity solution needed

[cjbage]

Hi there, hope you can help a bit. I am having really low humidity in my home and consequently in Cedar's tank.

I have covered what I can of the lid to help, misted until I received the Reptifogger yesterday ( which worked for about 5 min then promptly stopped so need to return it ) but for some reason I can't get the humidity to stay above 50% sometimes it drops to the low 30%. I have taken out the gauge and checked it and put it back in.

The substrate is moist, not wet and he has a shallow dish in his tank. I have also placed an order for a Zoo med hygro/therm controller since a few of you may remember the issues of my fight with the therm/hygro gauge I bought from petsmart. So hoping that will help with any issues later.

Does anyone have any ideas of a humidity solution other then more misting which I am already doing carefully so the tank doesn't swamp out as it is a critter keeper and would probably do so quite easily.

And please no Mist King unit recommendations lol. That I will get later when I add more tanks that really need something like that.

[DigitalPunk]

You should get a mistaking :P

Just kidding. IS your current temp/humidity gauge an analog gauge or Digital? I only ask because the analog gauges are as far from inaccurate as you can get without being called something else.

The HydroTherm will be way more accurate for your enclosure. If the soil is moist and not dripping wet and you have 50% to 75% of the top covered I would venture a guess and say I bet your humidity is in the 70% range and not 30 - 50%

What are you covering the top of the tank with? Have you tried using a damp towel to cover the tank. It won't absorb the humidity and helps a ton.

[cjbage]

its a digital, An All Living Things ( Petsmart Brand ) right now switched to tin foil because of the heat lamp, its going to get cold tonight here and will need the heat lamp on. will try the towel in a few min and just turn on a different light, don't want to mess with his day/night cycle too much with having to much of a change in the light going into his tank. Gonna go out and grab an exo therm digital in an hour or so since my cricket order won't be in till tomorrow and junk this unit. That way I should have a more accurate gauge for the next tank.

[DigitalPunk]

Cool.

Another thing to add, that may be the root cause of your issues. Most lights will dry out the air in the tank really fast. Heating by a heat pad or Ceramic Heat emitter will help keep the moisture in the air.

[cjbage]

yep a CHE is gonna be picked up too, they just didn't have any in 50w in stock each time I went in to get crickets hopefully there are some there this time if not will order from Amazon lol really don't want to drive an hour each way to get to another pet store just for a lamp

[DigitalPunk]

i got a 50w and ended up getting a 100w. I wanted to be able to heat the enclosure quickly and have power to spare. This helped me do a temp drop at night and recover from it without having to run the heater all day.

[cjbage]

hmm I think a 100w may be a bit big for a 10g? its on a dimmer so I guess it really doesn't matter though and could be use for something larger..down the road..say a few months >.>

[Ryokanfan]

My enclosure is an Exo Terra. All I did is remove one 26w bulb from the canopy and my humidity has already upped to 50% from 30%.

[cjbage]

The only problem is I have to have either the light on above his tank ( 40w bulb ) or open the curtains. I have room darkening curtains due to migraines so its practically pitch black in the room all the time. So one of those things has to happen, that 40w bulb is better for me then the curtains as that light is mostly contained to his area and not flooding the entire room.

[Ryokanfan]

My friend I did not know about your condition. Yes, reducing wattage will hopefully help with humidity for you. Have you considered using a high powered heat mat ? Habistat do a range of higher powered than the standard heat mat. This will increase warmth allowing you to reduce your light bulb strength. I myself have only just discovered these sorts of heat mats, as previously I found heat mats useless for generating heat.

[cjbage]

Yes I have a 25w for emergencies lol sometimes ANY light causes severe pain and as that is the only room in the house I can retreat to well I have to still to have light for the frog so I bear with it, I carted a desk lamp in there for now until I can get things figured out, its a pain in the rear to do but meh..as far as heat pads go I have looked at a few, I also have a controller coming and hopefully it will solve most of the issues.

[cjbage]

Finally got my humidity issue resolved, when I hooked up the Hygrotherm it was reading on average 30-40% so yeah my humidity in my home is also pretty bad, a gauge I had outside of the tank was reading in the high 20% range.

So I bought some LED lighting and jerry-rigged up a humidifier using a vick's cool mist humidifier, a tub stopper and some vinyl hosing, and boom.. it worked lol, now the humidity is around 65%, my little guy seemed to be more active and out of the substrate when humidity was around 65% give or take 1-2%, the humidifier still goes off a bit more then I thought it would, but that could be because I only have about 50% of the top covered in saran wrap, loosely, need to see about getting some acrylic or something to cover it up better.

Also the CHE heat works great, better then the infared I was using, will be using that bulb to keep him warm when I need to take him out to feed him or change his substrate.

[DigitalPunk]

Awesome news! Glad you got it sorted out

You could try replacing the plastic wrap with a damp dish towel. It will help lock in more humidity. Just wet it once a day