Reptile & Amphibian Forums

...There have been recent posts about how to set up caging for Rainbow Boas to provide correct temperature and humidity. I use proportional digital thermostats and often recommend them but they are expensive and they are not mandatory. If you keep your snakes in a room that is maintained in the high 60s to low 70s like most of us do with our home heating and airconditioning you can set the cage up with only a small heater under one end of the cage. This will keep the warm end of the cage in the high 70s to low 80s and the low end in at room temperature or a little higher. The heater used for this type heating must be controlled. A typical heat rock product is WAY too hot and even flexwatt heat tape is too hot when powered with 120 volts household electricity. The heat tape can be controlled with a simple cheap rheostat (dimmer) switch and if you check temperatures for awhile you can adjust it to get the warm end of the cage in the high 70s to low 80s and the cool end in the low 70s. If the room temperature varies too much this system will not adequately control the cage temperature. The thermometer you use to check temperatures must be accurate and it must be placed down on the floor of the cage where these snakes spend much of their time. If you have a room that is maintained in the low to mid seventies these snakes will do well with no other heating for the cage. To maintain humidity all you need is to provide plenty of moisture inside the cage and then limit the ventilation so that it does not escape from the cage. Screen tops and ventilation screens must be covered. Using a large powerful heater is also the wrong way to go. A larger powerful heater will overheat the cage and drive all of the moisture out of the cage. Overhead lighting is not required by these snakes. They are nocturnal and do not bask in the sun. In fact they seem to be stressed by bright lights. Substrate is required by nearly all snakes. In a cage that is kept warm and very humid almost any substrate will grow mold. These snakes also pass lots of liquid urates and so the substrate must be changed often. I use paper towel substrate for little ones and craft paper in the larger cages. Newspaper works fine though it is ugly and it will get ink (which is soy based and harmless) on you and your snakes. You can use other substrates. Moss and coconut husk products work well but they must be changed often.
Jeff

Good summary Jeff. I use rheostats with flexwat and they work great. I'm lucky enough to have a room to dedicate to my snakes which really helps. I keep the room at 75 degrees with a small window AC in the summer and a small space heater in the winter. Once the room temp is controlled the rest is easy.

My biggest problem with keeping my rainbows is my room temperature always ranges between 73-78F year around. I have no control over the heat in winter...other than opening the window. Thus any source of heat I try to eat the cage with tends to make the warm end in the low 90'sF. I use human style heating pads set to low setting on a timer to turn them off half the day to prevent them overheating or shorting out. I eventually plan to put them all on a theromstat of some sort, which may solve my problem.

On the positive size, my brazilian rainbows are eating regularly, growing, shedding and doing everything as far as I can tell, that indicate they are healthy and doing well.