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[almaron]

I imagine you could safely use a desiccant product of some sort, provided it was not accessible by the snake. The stuff I've used in industrial drying applications is good stuff. It comes in pellet form, and will remove a lot of moisture form the air. Then you just heat it to above about 300F to release that moisture. If it were me, I would take a coffee can or something, poke a bunch of air holes in the lid, fill it with desiccant, and put it in there. Then to dry it out, just stick in the oven for 30 minutes or so.

Just a thought, but maybe you could swap out but save the substrate. You could just repeat each time it got to damp. Maybe though you are saying that it'd just be a pain in the butt to swap out at all?