Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, so I think I am going to make the jump to my first Bolivian BCA after previous years working with Dumerili, Rosy, and BCI’s. I thank Chris Gilbert for some backchannel thoughts on working with this species and welcome additional anecdotal thoughts, particularly as to how they may differ from BCC.

I do have a particular question about housing, as in our new house the only option is to keep the snake in the finished basement. My main question has to deal with temperature. I would say that the basement hovers around 65° year-round. So, I will probably need a pretty solid PVC cage to retain temperature. Based on my experience with Boids, I am planning on going with belly heat.

My main questions are:
1) how do I manage a reasonable temperature gradient of 90° on the warm side and 75° on the cooler side with such a low ambient temperature. I laughed when reading Gus Rentfro’s article, where he commented that most people keep their interior homes between 74° and 84°. Sadly, not in Wisconsin!

2) Without purchasing a thermostat with night drop, it doesn't seem that I will be able to achieve that 10° drop in the evenings. Think that will be a problem?

I will be using my 24” Neodesha for now, but are there any thoughts on reasonably priced and readily accessible PVC cages? Back when I was active in the hobby, the options were Neodesha and Vision. For heat, I was planning on an under tank mat controlled by a Zoomed 500R.

Any other ideas that might be more practical or will allow for future expansion would be appreciated.
Thanks all,
Jon

Jon, you may want to post this in the main Boa forum as few people make it over to these channels.

Anyway. I would take a look at both Boaphile Plastics and Proline cages. I use Boaphiles but will be giving the latter a try.

You could get a small room heater from Wal-mart, or Home Depot to up the room temperatures. In the winter our house is 70 degrees, and I haven't ever had any problems.

The Herpstat ND thermostat is digital proportional (can also be used in an on/off setting) and has a built in night drop that you can set the time it comes on and the exact night temperature you want all to a tenth of a degree. Very nice. If you plan on needing more in the future you may want to look at the Herpstat PRO though. It costs 3 times as much as the ND, but the PRO is basically four NDs in one. It has four separate probes, and each is programable to its own settings.

Here is something else you can try. Normally to heat say a 4'x2' adult boa cage you would use a 12"x24" flexwatt or similar on one far side of the cage, leaving a 36"x24" area not heated. Well you could get a 36"x24" pad and set it on a separate thermostat at 70-75 degrees, and the regular warm side at the 90 degree basking temperature.

One other consideration is radiant heat panels. But do some research on these first. Some are made with plastics that can discolor and crack over time, while others are made out of better materials with metal frames.