Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering what the opinions were on the use of night drops. If you DO use them, what are you breeding?
Do you use seasonality as well in which you shorten the day lengths and decrease daytime high temps?
Also, how do you achieve the drop?
I was thinking of using a Helix system on Boaphile cages. What does everybody else do?

for the last few years i have produced hogs,dumerils,JCP's and BP's in my basement reptile room. i have windows and set my lites to coincide with the natural day length. i left my heat pads on but the overall temp in this room gets much cooler in the winter (i have to insulate 2 more walls, but almost afraid to...if it aint broke dont fix it!) the nite and day temps lowered to mid 70's at nite and maybe low 80's in the day. with close to 150 snakes i did not have any health problems. this year i wanted to achieve a lower nite drop and higher day temp, so i finished up a few insulating issues (the two walls still need work). i was able to stabilize the temps better and with two thermostatically controlled room heaters was able to get down to the 71 degree temp i wanted at nite. every morning i set the heaters at 86 for the DTH, but have not recorded the room that warm yet. i also turned off the heat pads this year in the breeding cages (visions). i started all this in jan however the room was dropping in temps slightly in nov,dec. i stopped feeding in mid dec and paired up several snakes at the end of dec. i have breeding activity from Hogs, Dumerils, JCP's, BP's, Colombians, and Bolivians. i am still trying to decide about when to turn the heat pads back on and when to return to higher nite temps (last year that naturally occured in march) and was probably when my breedings occured as my dumerils and hogs dropped in late july/august. thanks, j yocum

Thanks!
So essentially, it sounds like you use both seasonality and diurnal temperature cycles. I've bred Dumeril's and BCI and that's pretty much what happened for me, too. I was heating with lights and using a lower wattage during the night time so that there WAS a nightly drop. Then, like you're describing, the natural drop in house temps that happens during the winter caused a drop in the ambient and , therefore, the cage temps during the colder months. I'm making some changes in my caging set ups and rethinking some old ideas. I think I may keep the diurnal temp cycles and, like you're doing, go for a more dramatic seasonal change.
Thanks again for your response.
Anybody else got any input?