Posted by:
KarlSnake
at Sat Mar 6 16:19:18 2004 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by KarlSnake ]
I posted some of this elsewhere a few weeks ago & added some information more apropos to this thread.
I just made some quick measurements in Little Snooky's cage.
Air temp near ceiling at cold / water tank end = 80°F
Air temp at floor of cold / water tank end = 70°F
Temp of water in his tank (heater is off) = 73°F
Temp near ceiling of hot / heatlamps end = 103 °F
Temp at floor of hot / heatlamps end = 95°F
Temp of Little Snooky's topside skin = 88°F
Temp down in his coils = 86°F
Temp underneath his belly = 85°F
Humidity = 65% RH (saturation = 100%)
I didn't find any variation among locations.
I used a Type K thermocouple for the air temps / coil temps / belly temps & an infrared thermometer with the emissivity set to 0.92 for the skin temp. The humidity was measured with a chilled-mirror dew point hygrometer instrument. All are recently calibrated.
The temperature of the hot / heatlamps end is controlled by redundant thermostats about a foot above the floor.
I don't control the humidity at all. I'm sure it is higher when the waterbed heater underneath his water tank is on, but that is only on when he is in the process of shedding.
I don't have any day/night temperature variation, although I do have his general lighting - fluorescents - hooked up to a photocell outdoors for seasonal cycling.
Insofar as it is possible to tell, he seems comfortable. He spends about 2/3 of his time in the hot / heatlamp end & 1/3 submerged (except for his eyes & nostrils) in his water tank. He will pretty much stay in his water tank when he is in the process of shedding, during which I have the waterbed heater under it on & set to 80°F. He doesn't have a hidey since he crushed his Dogloo & this doesn't seem to bother him - he never spent much time in it anyway, just on top of it, which is how it came to be wrecked & discarded.
When I opened door #2 to take the measurements, he gave me his "where's the *!@#$%^&*^ pig" greeting, so I have some VERY bad news for at least one "feeder pig" at next Tuesday's livestock auction.
Humidity requirements are most probably just opinions. IMHO, anything between 50% & the walls turning green is OK. A nice warm tank to soak in is (again, IMHO) a requirement, especially for shedding.
My best guess is that snakes indigenous to tropical rainforrest areas "like" it a bit on the wet side. It sure can't hurt anything to at least try to achieve & maintain the RH somewhere close to what the animal would have in the wilds of its natural habitat.
A word about safety: Ever since the death-by-cooking of "Sparky KillYaWatt", my African Electric Catfish due to a malfunction - locked on - some 30 years ago, I ALWAYS use redundant thermostats for temperature control - PLUS some extra electronics set up to cut off the power to the whole scheebang if the thermostats seriously disagree with each other, independent overtemperature thermostats, & both a GFCI & an AFCI on the power panel for Little Snooky's cage. I usta have a smoke detector in his cage, but he nosed it off its mounting bracket & squashed it. Now I have the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling right above the top center of his cage. It is set up to kill the room power if it detects smoke, although the only thing it has detected thus far are dead/dying/weak batteries & ants.
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Cheers & keep on crawlin',
Karl
KarlSnake
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RE: night temps for reticulated python - KarlSnake, Sat Mar 6 16:19:18 2004