In my experience, radiant heat is great. It creates an almost perfect heating gradient. My panels are mounted to the top of one side of the cage. The probe from the Johnson Controls thermostat is mounted about four inches up the opposite sidewall. By mounting the probe this way, I can better control the ambient temperatures in the cage. During the day, the cool side of the cage is set to be around 82 degrees. This creates a hot spot that fluctuates between 88 and 94 degrees. It fluctuates because the heating panel is not always on. I feel that this is more natural and mimics what happens in nature.

The problem I have had with RHPs is humidity. I like to keep the cage humidity around 60%. However, I have had the hardest time keeping the humidity at this level. The cage and water bowls dry extremely fast. The cages needed misting almost daily. I really feel this has affected my boa breeding season this year too. The animals were just too dry.

In the thread on RHPs, I mentioned my struggle with keeping up the humidity; but others said they have never had this issue. If that was the case, I figured I must have been doing something wrong and emailed Pro Products. Instead of writing back, Bob from Pro Products called me. To make a long story short, my problem is ventilation. Even though the cages I use are sealed well, they still have a lot of ventilation causing heat and humidity to escape. As Bob mentioned, we cannot fight nature. The amount of humidity in the room is going to affect the humidity in the cage. The more ventilation, the quicker the equalization will be. Since we live in Florida, room humidity is fairly low. During the summer, the air conditioner pulls the humidity from the house. During the winter, there is not much humidity in the air.

So what is the solution? Bob suggested a test. The Boaphile provides ventilation via a small gap around the door. The first thing I did was refill the water bowls and mist down the cage. Next, I took blue painters tape and covered about 75% of the gap. This should stop excessive loss of heat and humidity, but still allow adequate ventilation for the animal. Now it was time to wait and see what happened.

Bingo. The next morning the cage doors were slightly fogged up, so I knew the humidity was high with just a glance. Unless I was using moist cypress mulch as the cage substrate, the cage doors never fogged. The actual humidity was unknown, as the digital thermostat with humidity just displayed “high”.

The next step is to adjust the tape to see what is needed to maintain proper humidity. Once I figure this out, I can use black weather stripping in place of the tape.

I still have not tested the Animal Plastics cages, as they were not as bad as the Boaphiles. The AP cages provide ventilation via slots in the upper back corners of the cages. These can easily be covered and adjusted with the tape.

In all actuality, my issues had nothing to do with the heat source used. It is all about room humidity and cage ventilation. I would have had the same problem no matter my heating source. In the past, my cages were in a temperature-controlled room, where humidity was not a problem. I used flexwatt heat tape to create the needed hotspot.

So if you are having humidity problems in your reptile cages, try the tape test. I think you will be happily surprised.

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