Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So I have ordered some goodies to improve the temperature control in my P.D. Deppei's tank. I will have two heating pads, and two digital temperature controls so I can set each zone at a different temperature.

I know it is recommended to have a cold side and a warm side, but if I can control the temperature in the tank to the optimal level, do I still need a cool side and a warm side, or can I just keep the entire tank at 78 deg F?

My reasoning behind this set up is two fold:

1) My house is a big old (1908) two story house with lots of drafts and single pane glass windows. It would cost me a fortune to heat the entire house to a comfortable level for my little Deppei. Typically I keep my house at 68 deg F in the winter and currently the cool side of my tank is running at about room temp and the warm side is about 10 to 12 deg higher than the cool side.

2) I heat with an alternate fuel to save money and sometimes the furnace fails to fire up. So it is not uncommon for me to walk into a 45 deg house when I come home from work.

So should I set one side to 72ish and the other side to 82ish or just set both sides to 78 degrees?

i say always try to give you snake a choice they know better than we do, i try to keep the warm side of my deppei no higher
than 80. you may have to monitor a lot closer in the winter, and may have to use two different thermostats on your cage.
hope this helps
joel

I say try for the 72 one side, 82 for the other side scenario. Verify with a temp gun. Have a hide for both spots. I'm betting your animal likes the cooler side. Keep us posted.

Keeping a temperature gradient makes sense and is easy to do with my next set up, plus with dual heating elements, each having their own controller, the gradient will always stay the same. Well except for summer when the ambient temperature of the house goes over 72.

Right now I have two digital thermometers in the tank, one on each end. These are placed on top of the aspen substrate. My thermocouples in the new set up will be under the substrate against the bottom glass, so it will be interesting to see the difference in temperatures between the bottom glass and the top of the substrate.

My snake really likes to burrow and spends most of his time "underground" so I would like to put my controlling thermocouples as close to the heating pads as possible to prevent large overshooting of the set temperatures. The delta between the bottom glass temperature and the top of the substrate temp should be constant assuming the thermal conductivity of the substrate does not vary much from the change in substrate density caused by the snake burrowing. Once the delta is empirically established, I can compensate for it with the temperature set point on the controller. But since the snake likes to stay buried, I may not include that fudge factor in my temperature settings, and just run straight bottom glass temperatures.

Anyway, I know, I know, a whole bunch of engineering mumbo jumbo, but I can't help it.

I will keep you all informed and get some pictures posted when I have the new set up going. Thanks again for your help.

All right, he is in his new home. One side at 82 and the other at 72. Both those temperatures are glass temps under the aspen substrate. My temperature probes for the controllers are outside the tank adhered to the UTH's. The temperature of the UTH is about 3 deg higher than what I am measuring in the tank.

The snake seems to be happy and still stays buried under the aspen most of the time. I always find him on the cool side. He scared me today though. I went looking/digging for him and couldn't find him until I moved his water bowl and he was under that. That is the first time I have found him there, Usually he is burrowed under his could side hide.

Thanks again for the help.