Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am thinking about switching from heattape to heat wire. I was wondering if anybody would give their personal opinion on this. thanks in advance matt

All of our home made racks are heated with heat cable, one line of cable for the hatchling and yearling racks and two lines for the adults tubs. All are covered with metallic tape to spread the heat. We used to use all mats, but since changing to soil heating cables have not had any failures in the seven years that we have been using them.

can u post pics of ur setup please, also do u heat from the bottom or the backside? are u running a thermostat?

We use 3" heat tape with an ECU Temp controller. Dont remember the brand name of the ECU. The heat tape is secured with Aluminum tape which also conducts the heat. Look closely and you'll see it on the bottom of the top 2 shelves. It works great.

-----
1.0 Pastel Ball
1.1 Het VPI Axanthic Balls
1.1 Het Albino Balls
0.0.2 Red Tail Boas
1.0 Albino Nelsons Milksnake
1.1 Room mates
2.2 Dogs
0.1 Cat

Always use a thermostat. Heat cable can get very hot. I even put a dimmer switch on mine for back up incase of thermostsat failure.

I use heat cable to heat my cooler incubator (made from a cooler...don't mean its more 'sweet' then the fridge cooler )
and I find it pretty good...I just have it coiled along the bottom of the cooler, held down by electrical tape.

One thing to note about heat cable, is about 6 feet of it is non heat conductive...so you have to subtract that part from the heat producing part of the cable for figuring out how much length you need.
-----
PHLdyPayne