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Cage Heating boas.

grogansilver Nov 24, 2008 06:27 PM

My snake room is full of all different kinds of snakes in tanks now i just got two new boas and a third on the way my question is if i keep my room temperature at 80-85 degrees all the time do i really have to use under the tank heaters?

Replies (7)

LarM Nov 24, 2008 06:38 PM

Yep they need a basking spot available of 90* - 94* about.
. . . . . Lar M
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Boas By Klevitz
Boas By Klevitz

grogansilver Nov 24, 2008 06:44 PM

reason why i ask is because the under tank heating mats instructions say if the room is keep at 85 and above you dont need to have the heating mats to unplug them which did not make sense.

boaphile Nov 24, 2008 08:33 PM

Not if you don't want to produce babies.
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boaphile Nov 25, 2008 09:12 AM

I had some emails asking additional questions, so I thought I would answer them here instead of via email. That way more people can read it.

I keep the room I have all my babies in at 84 degrees. I also have many sub-adult and adult males in that same room at 84 degrees. No warm spot. No heat in any of the racks. I heat the room with a space heater and use a double thermostat to run that thermostat. The temp actually ranges from 81 degrees down low, height wise, to 84 degrees up high. Works great. This would work fine for adult females too if I wasn't trying to breed them.

I don't like a "hot spot" preferring a larger warm area to the customary "hot spot". I can't possibly take time to explain every scenario and possibility that can be tried by the masses. In fact I'm not very interested really in taking a lot of time to in effect consult with people about how to set up heat properly for any number of different type of set ups under any number of different types of conditions with a virtual infinite number of degrees of willingness to make a system that actually works. This I do however, every day with customers who are setting up the cages that we build. That after all is my job and I am happy to do that. But, I have had more than one guy call me who bought cages from somebody else, or who built his own, to ask me how they can set them up to work properly. Apparently it is a surprise to some people, that that's not my job.

I have written in detail about what I do as far as temps are concerned. Boas, in my opinion, certainly do better at lower temperatures than many people keep them. Those temps and how I do my Boas are 80 - 82 at the cool end and 90 - 91 on the heat. The caging that I build is designed around the types of requirements that I think are necessary both for breeding and properly housing Reptiles. It's pretty simple really and a whole lot more fun when it's all dialed in.

So that's about it. Have fun!
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LarM Nov 25, 2008 11:42 AM

I stand corrected- N/P
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Boas By Klevitz
Boas By Klevitz

boaphile Nov 25, 2008 12:29 PM

You were not wrong Larry. There is no single way to keep Boas. The way I do it is just the way I do it. Not the right way vs. the wrong way. A decent thermogradient is necessary to breed consistently. That's inarguable. So you were not wrong in need of "correcting".
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siberian1 Nov 25, 2008 08:17 PM

Thanks for the response Jeff. I like your temp range. I was very fortunate to find someone willing to share a ton of info also. Ended up buying the cage because of it. I use ultratherm for heat, just wondering if you use the same. So far the results have been great here

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