Posted by:
liquidleaf
at Thu Nov 9 11:34:26 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by liquidleaf ]
Well, a lot of people who use heat pads as the only heating source do not use glass tank cages, but plastic caging or tubs instead.
The reason it is hard to keep ambient temperatures higher with just a heat pad in a glass tank is that glass is a poor insulator. Heat from the pad escapes out the tank walls and through the top (unless you have the top mostly covered and insulated). I've had glass tanks before, I know what you're going through and I had both ceramic heat emitters above the cage and UTH below the floor.
In my plastic cages, with ONLY heat pads, the ambient air temperatures are in the low to mid 80s, and the hot spot right above the heat pad is about 92 (heat pad is on a thermostat). The plastic cage just is insulated better.
You can probably do a few things to have undertank heating be the only method you use in your glass cage - use foam insulation board (or reflectix foil insulation) behind the back of the tank and on the sides of the tank. (And under the tank too if there isn't a solid surface under there, but make sure there is a small air gap so the heat pad doesn't overheat the glass.) Make sure that most of the top of your cage is covered by an insulating material as well, this will help keep in not only heat, but moisture as well. If you have a screen top, covering most of it (leave a little ventilation) will help keep in heat tremendously.
People are probably suggesting to you to get a wood cage because of insulation. Again, glass sucks for keeping heat in. That's why most modern house windows are double-layered with a vacuum space in the middle - because old fashioned single-layer glass windows would leak out all of the heat, and glass tanks are only single-layer glass. However, wooden tanks are a little trickier to heat, you can't necessarily use heat pads under a wooden cage because the heat might not pass all the way through the floor. That's why I love my plastic cages, heat passes well through the floor but the inside retains temperature very well.
Hope this helps. Most people start out with glass cages but wind up building their own or buying plastic caging to help retain more heat. The reason the air doesn't stay heated in a typical glass cage setup is that all the heat escapes out the glass walls and screen top of the cage.
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Lauren Madar
www.ophidiagems.com
1.1 Hog Island Boas
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[ Hide Replies ]
- lights vs pads - viperbitex, Thu Nov 9 09:56:02 2006
 RE: lights vs pads - liquidleaf, Thu Nov 9 11:34:26 2006
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