You can attach or slip a heat pad under the plastic box and use an ordinary plug-in style lamp dimmer to control the heat output. This is acceptable but not precise. It will keep the temp to non-harmful levels but makes it tough to hold a certain temperature when your ambient room temp changes. It is cheap and will work. Use a thermometer to find out the useful range of the dimmer, then mark it with a sharpie so you know where to set the dimmer. The desired setting will be different when the room is, say 80 deg, compared to when the room is say 70 deg.

They sell herp ON/OFF controllers for $40 that are fine. You can even plug the dimmer into one of those. Then you can use the dimmer and the thermostat will shut it off if the temp gets too high. This is a great, affordable and simple setup.

Without a dimmer, a nice way to control heat is to elevate the box over the heat pad. During Summer, you might want 1/4 inch or more of space. During Winter, maybe just a hair of space. Tile makes a very nice heat distributor and buffer. You can put tile in the cage with heat pad under the box to buffer the heat some.

I did the screen idea with heat lamp. The cage is heated under with a heat pad. I used flet spacers to elevate the box a little. The lamp is only 15 watts. It was Winter and I needed just a little extra air temp in there.

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