Thanks for sharing! You sound a lot like me, lol! When I first got my female gtm I had her in a quarantine tank on a stand that had another tank under her. The heat from the lamp below did the same thing your heat tape does under your btm cage. It worked well now that I think about it. With them now together in a bigger tank there is no tank under them or any heat. I currently keep my incubator under their tank but now after reading what you wrote maybe I will put another tank under there instead for under heat. I get nervous using under tank heat mats and tape because I had a bad experience with them. My equipment was faulty and ended up burning the belly of a rescued baby nile monitor I rehabbed. He had buried himself under the substrate and laid on top of the glass where it was. He was fine afterwards but it had burnt him to the point where he had 2 fluid filled blisters. Poor guy! I guess I could try it again and test new equipment on a spare 55 gal tank to make sure it works properly before using it.



With the big cage I'm building I hadn't thought about heating from underneath. I am not sure how that could be done. Are you going to attempt this with the cage you are doing for your btm? When my cage is done, one of the things I would like to put in it is a water feature. Not sure if I am going to buy one or make one myself(I would like it to be filtered as well). This would help with humidity also. I am also contemplating either installing an automatic mister or a fogger. Not sure yet which one I should do. Any thoughts on this? Oh, and one more thing, I want to put in large tree branches but I don't know how I can sterilize such big pieces, do you? BTW, this is my first time building a big cage



The pic of your btm is absolutely stunning! Congrats on getting such a nice specimen!

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