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

One thing to keep in mind with belly heat you can achieve the high temp you need n problem at all , the biggest issue will be ambient air temps . While belly heat will heat a cage it also quickly looses heat when the doors opened where with a Radiant heat panel in the cage you are constantly warming the air that passes under the unit ( mounted on the ceiling of the cage ) Also substrates or lack there of in cages will greatly change the temps the cages hold and how well they hold them in when a door is opened . A cage in a cooler room with only newspaper in it for substrates will be a colder cage then a cage beside it setup identical but having aspen bedding or even cypress bedding as these will build up and hold heat making the cage warmer in the end result then a cage with nothing to build heat mass up
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Thank you for the thought provoking reply. What if I had both belly heat and a radiant panel and one of them (not sure which) was controlled by the thermostat to regulate the daytime temp, while one stayed on all the time. And then I used a timer to shut off the thermostat and associated heating element during the night, which would then leave only one of the heaters on, thereby creating a nighttime drop?
Thoughts?
Jon

I'll add to what JungleHabitatsPlastics told you (he makes very nice caging, BTW)..

I've kept BCI in cold rooms just like you mention. I found that using only belly heat for what will become a large mass of snake is not real effective when the air in the cage is cool.

I ended up using a cage with two light fixtures wired in parallel. During Winter I used a 60 watt red heat bulb in one socket and a 40 watt in the other, both controlled by a proportional controller. This kept the air in the cage in the 75-80 range. Then I used a heat pad in the cage (Kane heat mat) and used a dimmer on that.

During Summer I didn't need the lights on, and I only used the heat pad.

Later I replaced the light fixtures with a single radiant heat panel.

I just soaked the snake once a week or whenever needed to hydrate him, since the overhead heaters (and heat pad for that matter) dry out the air in the cage somewhat.
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Mark