Uhh.. Can there be too much humidity?

Let me start off by explaining the situation. We finally finished building our baby (Sulcata) a more suitable indoor enclosure after being indecisive about a lot of things. At last, I am pretty content with it. I do have one question though. It is essentially a large wooden box. I believe during the building process it measured to roughly 43" x 43". By the looks of it, i'm guessing about 1.5 feet tall. (I wasn't the craftsman, obviously lol. ;]) The entire top is one giant hinged wooden lid with two holes cut, one for the UVB light and one for the night light. To help in maintaining the heat, there is also a Hydrokable heating cable all throughout the bottom. To aid in holding in the humidity, we lined the inside with a pond liner. I am seriously impressed with the liner's capabilities too. It's all fresh moistened substrate that sat overnight (haven't had to spray it at all today) and I placed a large tray of tortoise seed mix that has been growing for awhile now in one of the corners and then he has a few plants scattered about. The humidity since we got everything set up in there has been gradually going up throughout the day, but staying at awesome percentages along with the temps.

However.. I just checked it and the basking temp is just over 100 degrees, and the rest of the enclosure seems to be around 84 degrees except the cooler corners. That's great! However, the humidity levels read 99%! It's never been that high in his previous enclosure. I would say the highest was 90%. Is this possible, accurate, or even safe?

The monitor that i'm using is the AcuRite one. It shows the temperature and humidity levels all in one. Here is a link to the one we have: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013BKDO8/?tag=exoticpetnetw-20

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If you want to see any photos, I can take some.

I honestly don't know for a sulcata, I know that people usually advise you have a humid hide at 100% and the rest of the cage in the 80-90% range, but either way here is a bump, hopefully someone with sullies will stop by soon and answer you.

Sounds like you have created a swamp. I think if you leave the lid open a few inches the humidity will drop to about 85%.

How old is your Sully?

The danger of high humidity would be if the temperatures drop; could lead to respiratory infection.

Check Tom's postings for advice on raising Sullies with moist conditions.

With any other type of tortoise you have to be careful of shell rot. But high humidity with sulcatas doesn't seem to have that effect.

Willtort2 gave you good advice.

Your humidity is not a problem. Just be sure the temps do not go lower the. 80. Don't add anymore water and it will eventually drop. However, it's fine where it is too.

Thanks everybody. I guess because it was one solid, gigantic brick and had to take so much water to break it up is why it's so moist and humid in there. It lowered to 94% when I checked it about 30 minutes ago. I think during the day I may keep it open for a little while to air it out some. I didn't expect it to hold in heat and humidity so well, being about 4-5 times bigger than what his temp set up was in the Rubbermaid. I wondered if the substrate heater has something to do with it?

WillTort2 said:

How old is your Sully?

The danger of high humidity would be if the temperatures drop; could lead to respiratory infection.

Click to expand...

He/she should be just over 2 months old now. Temps seem to be doing very well. Basking spot is between 100-110 degrees and the rest seems to taper off and be an average of about 84. I'm not concerned with temps being too low but if that were to ever happen, i'm curious as to what exactly are the "signs" of RI's?

https://sites.google.com/site/tortoiselibrary/health-and-medical/respiratory-infections

Just for your reference.