Reptile & Amphibian Forums

has anyone uses the Flexwatt heat tape by just plugging it into the wall? this is for under cage heat in a vision cage

HORRIBLE IDEA! It is a completely unregulated heat scource, one minute your snakjes are freezing and the next it will be hot enough to kill your snakes. If you are thinking of going this way because of the cost of the helix then go with a cheaper thermostat. Alot of people use the helix just for their incubators anyway. look on bigapple or lllreptile in the thermostat section and pick one4 thats right for you.

I only ask because my Helix is haveing a probe malfunction. I think it is the code is comming up EE E4. I just wanted to know what to do for a few days until i get another thermostat

He used Flexwatt with no kind of control. It melted all his sterile's and killed every single animal in his home made rack.
It was the most awful smell I ever had to endure.
He called me over to try and save some of the snakes. You can't bring them back from the skillet.
A very hard lesson to learn.
Was like twelve Publeans, six hondurans, a couple corns and california kings.
He gave up keeping snakes, and went back to lizards, in tanks with Dome lights.

you may want to buy a zoomed, esu or some other "cheapie" from the petstore and set it fairly low because they heat up a few degrees high then cool...they are not an long term thermostat though... they are not consistant... its a short term fix before your new one comes in....heat tape with out a thermostat is a disaster in the making ...no time for spell check time for sopranos...ill check back later to see if you have it under control
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we're here because a hobby became an obsession... if only every one had this much fun

some days your the dog, some days your the hydrant...don't know who started this saying but it's the truth

Flexwatt is nothing to play around with. Its for people who know what they are doing. It can easily burn your while house down, not to mention kill all your snakes and burn up your cages/racks. Want a cheap rheostat? Skip it, they are not much better in most cases, and as much as they cost, you can just spend double and get the propper setup. Sound like I am jumping all over this? Good. There are pleanty of solutions to heating cages without heat tape, so choose wisely. Flexwatt is not UL listed... why do you suppose that is?

i suggested the cheapie as a temporary solution until the new one came in...would you use nothing or use a cheap one on low? i use a zoomed when i have to..it's not the best but if you set it low it keeps my animals warm until i fix the problems in my rack... i would never tell some one to take the cheap route but sometimes you have to improvise especially when you don't normally find helix ranco and Johnson at a store near by. You usually have to ship them, so what do you do when your animals are cold and its a 3 day wait? I personally rather use a
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we're here because a hobby became an obsession... if only every one had this much fun

some days your the dog, some days your the hydrant...don't know who started this saying but it's the truth

Those Zoo med thermostats are crap. You are much better off buying a plug in rheostat at the Home Depot for $10.00. They are made to handle more power than would be needed for a typical rack system and they are UL listed for dimming down electrical devices. I have been controling heat tape with lamp dimmers for nearly 20 years, and while it is not as fancy as a thermostat, it more than adequately does its job. Cheap is not necessarily bad, but those pet product companies typically churn out trash, I wouldn't wipe my backside with anything Zoo-Med. Good luck.

Will

i like this responce so much better than the cheap post lol...before i thought you were calling me cheap for improvising with zoomed but i like your idea better using a $10 dimmer! The zoomed is a last resort situation but the dimmer seems more effective and the price reflects the more than likely one time use.
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we're here because a hobby became an obsession... if only every one had this much fun

some days your the dog, some days your the hydrant...don't know who started this saying but it's the truth

A good lamp rheostat will easily handle the load of most reasonable flexwatt setups. If you are using a lot of tape, add up the potential energy usage of the width of tape you are using by the number of feet used and find a dimmer that will handle it. Most lamp rheostats will handle up to 600 watts...thats a lot of Flexwatt. They are inexpensive and reliable (UL listed for dimming electrical devices). As I stated in another part of this thread, I've been successfully using dimmers with Flexwatt for 20 years. You can even get plug in varieties if you are intimidated by the wiring process. Of course it is just my opinion, but I have never found it necessary to control a cage temperature with a thermostat, incubator - absolutely, but not a cage. My goal has always been to have a small area of slightly elevated temperature where the snake can easily go and thermoregulate. A dimmer does that very well.

People get all tied up with all of this fancy equipment and think that such an investment will replace the need for observation of their charges and good, basic husbandry. I am in no way impying that this is the case with you, as I don't know you or your methods, but it seems to be a common thread in this forum where inexperienced folks want to protect high investment animals simply by throwing money at the problem.

Will

I have run cages and racks in the past with heat tape and no thermostat for years without problems and with consistant results in temperatures. Maybe I just got lucky, but I have never had a problem.

Before everyone lets me have it, now I have thermostats on my racks because I would like to breed and therefore keep everything much more controlled.
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1.21 ball pythons
1 speckled kingsnake
1 snapping turtle
1.0 argentine horned frog
1.1 English Bulldogs

You can order new probes from helix if you have a dbs-1000. It will run you about 15 to 20 dollars and is very easy to install. Hope I could help. Jon

It is not worth the risk. Flexwatt sandwiched between cages is risky in the first place. Without a temp control device, it is just plain foolish. Buy a $10.00 plug in dimmer from Home Depot. They can handle the power load and are very reliable. you don't need a thermostat for heat tape, just something to control the output of your heating device. Good luck.

Will

I was soo worried i read the error code wrong! It was just a night drop sensor i was able to call Helix and it is fixed!!!! Thanks for the feed back!!