Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've always used lights for my heating but with the ammount of reps I have now I'm needing to start thinking about space. In doing so I want to start changing over to using under tank heating. My biggest concern is how to accurately judge temps in the cage. I usualy have themp guages about an inch off the ground on the back of the left and right side of the terrarium. One for the temp on the cool side and one for the temp on the hot side. My concern is that being off the ground the therms will tell me the radiant heat coming off the ground but not the accurate temp of the ground its self. I don't want to take the chance of burning the snake's belly. Do you all put some kind of guage directly on the floor of the terrarium to accurately judge the temps? I only use paper towels for substrate. I like being able to clean it up easily and that I can see anything that may be amiss in the contrast of the white. How many layers thick will I need to pile it to be safe? Should I layer it ontop of some other substrate? Carpet? Thanks all!

Widj

Get a digital thermometer, if you're not already using one. Get the kind with a temperature probe connected by a long, thin wire. Place it directly on the bottom of the cage under the paper towels. I use Elmer's glue to keep mine in place. That way, if the snake hides under the paper towels, you don't have to worry about getting burned. If you have a snake that never goes under the towels, just place the probe on top of the towels. I sometimes stick the probe right into the hide on the hot end. Using the edge of the hide to hold the cord down.

A thermometer like that gives an indoor/outdoor temperature reading. The "outdoor" temp is what the probe is reading. The "indoor" temp is the temp of the thermometer unit itself. Stick the thermometer unit on the cool end and you're all set. It will measure ambient air temp.

A great way to handle this is to use a proportional controller or an ON/OFF controller for heaters with the same watt-density. That is, say you have 5 tanks that all use a 6x8 ZooMed heat pad. You can put all of those on one outlet strip, plus one more heat pad that is your control heater. You place the controller probe on that control heater, and the other 5 will be controlled as well.

Undertank heaters do not provide a gradual temperature gradient like lights do. When the room is cool, the heat pad may be 85 deg but 1" away on the substrate it can be 65 deg if the room is cool and humidity is low. Reptiles adjust for this by placing more or less of their body over the heater. More body over the heater, more blood being warmed and more warm blood circulated to the cool parts. I suppose it is the internal body temp that matters, so even a tropical snake exposed to 65 deg air temps for a short time will be fine if its internal body temp is up.

What I meant to conclude with after all those words above is that I get better feeding response for babies in certain species when using ceramic heat emitters overhead. I've seen it with neonate rosyboas and Children's pythons. My setups are in rooms that get very cool in Winter, so that is likely why the addition of overhead heat made the difference.

Thank you all for the replies. The information is greatly appreciated. One of the main reasons I am going to under tank heating is that I'm going to be changing over to boaphile plastic cages that I can stack. Since there won't be room for ceramics or lights in this sort of setup I have opted for the under tank heating method. The room we have our snakes in is their own bedroom essentialy. It has it's own heating and AC unit to regulate it's temp. We try to keep the room perpetualy at 75 degrees F. This way their cold ends won't be too cold and it will be fairly easy to keep teir warm ends in the 85 - 90 range depending on the snake. Again, thanks for the info I greatly appreciate it!

Widj