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I want to put this UVB light over a baby savannah monitor. Is it necessary to remove that clear plastic seen in the picture? Should I have it so there is bulb shining through the screen with no plastic inbetween is my question. Thanks

>>I want to put this UVB light over a baby savannah monitor.
>> Is it necessary to remove that clear plastic seen in the
>> picture? Should I have it so there is bulb shining through
>> the screen with no plastic inbetween is my question. Thanks

The visible light will get through to illuminate the monitor. Plastic will screen out UVB and much of the heat. However, UVB has not been shown to be necessary for monitors - in fact it seems that with proper husbandry you get active, healthy, prolific monitors without any UVB at all. Also, I would not rely on the set-up you have for heat, my guess is that you would need a second heat source.

I will confess that my favorite reptile light is the Powersun mercury vapor bulb. It is marketed as a UVB producing bulb, but mainly I use them because they produce so much nicer looking light than incandescents, halogens, or fluorescents and they also supply a lot of heat. They are fairly pricey, though - best suited to small scale hobbyists who can afford to put out money on making their enclosures look nice.

Best of luck.

Luke

Oh that little UVB would never get the cage up to the necessary 130F basking spot. I have additional heaters some type of UVA spot light and a ceramic heater for night time. Thanks for the help, I think I will try to remove that plastic. Some people don't think the UVB is necessary... I figure I got one one might as well use it.

I have several pictures of young fast growing monitors basking on top of flourescent light assemblies, these had UV bulbs in them at the time. The temperature of these assemblies was between 122-125F (surface). I switched bulbs in these assemblies to regular flourescent and blacklight bulbs, the lizards now spent a little time exposed to the bulbs, with UV bulbs they never exposed themselves to the bulbs.
I had a beardie cage that had a log in the center near the top under a UV bulb. The lizards seemed to enjoy the light, so I changed the cage a bit, I added insulation to the outside of the cage and brought the temperature up a bit in the room, the lizards avoided the UV bulb now. I switched them to blacklights and regular flourescent bulbs of which they spent a bit of time near, more time if I lowered the temps in the room.
If you want to spend the money on thoise things, by all means go for it. They have never proven to be of any benefit in the, well over 20 plus years Ive kept reptiles in captivity, soon 17 years with monitor lizards.

I guess the best thing to do would be to do a little experimenting and give the lizards the option of two different type of lighting and see which they like best.

If you want to spend the money on those things go right ahead, but they serve no purpose for properly kept reptiles, none Ive ever seen or experienced need them.
The plastic blocks the UV light so if you want remove it. The heat produced by the bulb and light assembly (while less than an incandescent bulb) is the important part, and they will make use of it.
In fact light intensity in the wild is more important to them in signalling time of day, etc than UV is.

I took the plastic off and thanks for help.

For a baby sv UVB would be a great choice, all monitors have evolved around UVB in some form so why remove this from their captive keeping, although the larger monitors may not need UVB Im sure they like it, I know our dwarf monitors will go outdoors and bask on a 55F sunny day as opposed to getting 120F temps under the indoor lights so that alone tells me they find something they like in it or they wouldnt be doing it, but for insect eating monitors [primarly the dwarfs] UVB has proven to be very important in our conditioning of females that are breeding.
Cheers, Robert

go to this website.

http://www.uvguide.co.uk/

That was a good link some of those lizards got harmed from the lights they were apparently too close.