Making an acrylic cover for indoor enclosure

[linjuncheung]

I’m thinking of making a custom acrylic cover for my wooden tortoise table since keeping humidity high in an open top enclosure is impossible. I am leaving an gap that’s just under one inch wide, along the edge. Is that gap going to drain all excess humidity? Should I make the cover more air tight? I thought a small gap would let in some oxygen but maybe that’s not necessary.

The enclosure is 48 by 28 inches and 12 inches tall. Ambient room humidity is circa 40% and I want the enclosure to be in the 70-80% range. TIA

 

[linjuncheung]

It’s for a nine month old Russian tortoise

 

[Minority2]

Do you have enough room to get a bigger table, about 2x that size? An 8ft x 4ft is pretty much what you'll likely require for that tortoise in a few short years.

The reason why I say this is because to me it makes more sense just to go right ahead and build the bigger enclosure and spend that extra amount of time installing an acrylic top to that project than to sink anymore funds into the smaller enclosure that your tortoise will likely outgrow that table in the near future.

To answer your previous questions:
Gaps do not have to be too wide to ensure enough oxygen is inside the closed chamber enclosure. There's always going to be tiny gaps between the door/opening housing, the light fixtures if they're in between the enclosure, and cable housing system. You can install a small hole for where the cables come in and out. That's a common practice used in commercially available pre-made enclosures.

Tortoises are very efficient breathers. They use much less oxygen in comparison to humans if left alone. That breathing becomes more sporadic when they come in contact with someone of something they identify as either a challenger or predator.

For now if you do choose to focus on building a larger enclosure instead of remodeling the current one you can always just pour a large jug of water into the substrate on a daily basis. Make sure your substrate is deep enough 4-6 inches so that the top layer is relatively unaffected by all that wetness water can bring to the substrate because if the bottom layer isn't deep enough enough to hold all that liquid your top layer may become too damp to the point where it will start staying wet for the majority of the day and possibly even night. That's not going to be too good for your tortoise's plastron. Just measure as you go. Eventually you'll get to the point where you'll be able to closely estimate how much water you'll need on a day to day basis to keep the table's humidity level where you want it to be.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Before taking the plunge and buying anything, make sure you can find plexiglass.
It's become a hot commodity with this COVID-19 going around