Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I dont have any experience in useing racks or in useing those sterilite or iris type tubs for houseing herps but am going to make one for breeding and such because its basicaly so much more cost effective. I was going to use the 32 quart sized ones. Aprox 16"x24"x6" or 15"x22"x6" that size. Now for my cage tanks that I have I heat 1/3 the tank so for these tubs I would need an 8" wide piece of flexwatt preferably.

I dont have experience heating tubs. Most racks I have seen use 4" so is useing 8" going to melt the tubs? I do have a thermostat.

To get 8" I would have to use 2 4" wide pieces. What kind of temp variations between the 2 pieces am I going to get? Also does the temps stay fairly constant from left to right? Is there anywhere you can get 8" wide flexwatt at I can only find 3", 4" & 11".

Is there any difference in performance between haveing 2 4" wide flexwatt strips pluged in to the thermostat seperately as opposed to haveing them wired together useing one plug? Besides haveing less plugs I mean temp performance.

Personally, I would use a larger tub, such as the 41qt Sterilite. I am currently using a 32qt rack for colubrids but will be moving them into larger cages before they get to breeding size. I am using one strip of 4" flexwatt to heat the tubs and it is working fine. IMO, you do not need to run two strips. Should you run two strips, it should heat evenly if using both on the same t-stat (assuming both pieces of flexwatt are equal lengths). Whether you wire them in parallel or have each on its own separate power cord should not make any difference. I have each strip of flexwatt wired with its own cord, which then plugs into a power strip in the back and the power strip is plugged into the t-stat. This allows me to unplug the power to tubs which are not being used.

Good luck with the project!

Bart

For colubrids, one piece of the 4-inch Flexwatt is fine or else a 1ft section of the 11-inch wide Flexwatt. Consider that these snakes only need to heat part of their body usually, and even if they want to heat all of their body, even a large kingsnake can mostly fit over those pieces.

I like the 11-inch piece in the center because you can raise the box up with felt pads on the corners and just clear the Flexwatt. So no routing of a groove is necessary.

For larger boas,pythons you will need to increase the heated area accordingly, or heat the room and then use the above pieces only.
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Mark

This is for leopard geckos. My concern is haveing a large enough heated size zone so I can put both hot hide and humid hide and have them over the hot zone and not half on half off or one hide on and one off. I also need to put some sort of substrate because the tubs are a little slick for them and they dont get good traction on the plastic tubs. I cant use loose substrate and I dont want to waste paper towels. I would rather pay $3.00 for a piece of tile and cut it and use that. Easier to wipe down and I dont have to buy something anymore like how I use on my display tanks.

>>This is for leopard geckos. My concern is haveing a large enough heated size zone so I can put both hot hide and humid hide and have them over the hot zone and not half on half off or one hide on and one off. I also need to put some sort of substrate because the tubs are a little slick for them and they dont get good traction on the plastic tubs. I cant use loose substrate and I dont want to waste paper towels. I would rather pay $3.00 for a piece of tile and cut it and use that. Easier to wipe down and I dont have to buy something anymore like how I use on my display tanks.

Why not use newspapaer? Its basically free if you know anyone who gets a newspaper weekly or of course if you get the paper as well.

I think a 32 quart tub is plenty big for a leopard gecko...
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Jason A.
"Long time Herper, first year Breeder `07."
My 2008 Care Sheet & The BRB Stats. Username: brb@kingsnake.com