Suggestions for PVC enclosure holding high humidity.

[Courtlliam]

Hello everyone! First time owner of a beautiful Northern named Arlo!

Here for help on humidity management in a naturally humid climate.



The story here is pretty simple. I live in Washington, pretty humid state, and Arlo has recently been upgraded from a glass 40 gallon breeder into a 4x2x2 PVC enclosure.

Before the PVC his substrate was Forest floor (Cyprus mulch) and his humidity was able to be kept to about 45-50%

I figured this was due to a mesh top.

Once we switched tanks we kept the cypress mulch initially only to see it spiking up to 85%. We left it for a couple days to see if it died down but ultimately decided to remove and replace the Cyprus with aspen shavings as we feared the high humidity would cause further issues.

As it’s been a month with the aspen the humidity has varied from 48% to 62%

I’m hoping to get some feedback and/or recommendations on substrate out there that is more natural and will assist with Arlo’s target humidity.

Thank you in advance!

[splashy07]

PVC enclosures keep humidity high due to their construction, but I still would not use aspen. Repti-bark and coco husk has given me better results. When I first began keeping northerns I also thought aspen would be a decent choice but excessive sneezing and horrible sheds convinced me to change over. You can also continue to use cypress, just dry it out a bit before using. Sometimes I use a combination of all three (cypress, repti bark, coco) depending on what I have around. Another fault of aspen is that it seems to mold almost immediately upon getting wet. Good luck!