Terranium humidity problem? or not?

[summit]

I have a planted terranium for my crested gecko, he has not quite arrived yet, but I have had the live plants and substrate in there for a week and have been monitoring it to make sure its going to be a good home. I have 3/4" layer of pea gravel for drainage, with a layer of screen, then about 3-4" of exo terra jungle earth, the terranium is 12x12x18 with 2 ficus plants and some moss. What I have noticed after giving the plants a watering on saturday, is that the humidity has not gone below 62% and sits usually at about 70%, even with the substrate now barely damp, this was with no misting, I just misted the plants now and the humidity is at 99% but my substrate and terranium did dry out quite well between waterings, is this ok?

 

[Valley Reptiles]

As long as it dries out it is ok.

 

[summit]

Thanks for your reply, so if my gecko by chance drinks from a water dish and does not need misting for drinking, can I cut back on the misting since it dosnt need it for humidity? or eliminate it altogether? or is there other puposes to misting other than providing drinking water, and keeping humidity up?

 

[jblayza]

Personally I think that too much humidity can be just as bad as not enough. I would try to add some ventilation to allow the humidity to drop during the day. I guess if the enclosure dries out completely it should be okay. A friend of mine once had a crestie who he kept in an enclosure with constant high humidity and the tip of the tail turned black and fell off. The difference I think is that he never allowed his enclosure to dry out between misting.

 

[Valley Reptiles]

A friend of mine once had a crestie who he kept in an enclosure with constant high humidity and the tip of the tail turned black and fell off.

That comes from bites from other geckos not the humidity.

You will need to mist. They may drink from the water dish but most of the time they will drink the droplets from the cage and plants.

 

[summit]

Thanks, I will keep up the misting then, I think the problem may be the exo-terra light takes up half the screen top, so it only has a 6"x12" screen opening on the top where as without the light the full screen top would be 12x12" so the air flow is reduced by 50% because of the plant light. Monitoring it today, I think the light being on will help alot, I switched it on last night as I just got it and left it on and it dried it up that much faster, before I was just using natural sunlight, and the evaporation rate was very slow.

How much does a person normally mist? 2-3 sprays?

 

[jblayza]

It was housed alone in a custom acrylic enclosure. It started at the tip and was slowly movin up the tail. He drilled some more holes and started letting the enclosure dry between misting and that part of the tail dropped off, but the rest stayed:main_thumbsup:

That comes from bites from other geckos not the humidity.

You will need to mist. They may drink from the water dish but most of the time they will drink the droplets from the cage and plants.