Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know a while back there was a thread on puck lights. Has anyone used them in enclosed cages? for example stackable plastic cages. I'm looking into switching my bearded dragons into stackables 4x2x16or18 but don't like the exposed basking bulbs that I see alot of people doing. Does anyone have info of how much heat and what the basking temp is for cages of this size? Is anyone already doing this?

Puck lights at full throttle will heat the plastic above them quite a bit. I have them installed in a few plastic cages and dim them down alot.

I think for beardies, I would recommend a standard lamp socket and a bulb of choice.

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Mark

Are you using any kind of heat sink behind them? How tall are your cages? and can you give me the temp on the bottom where a basking spot would be?

The problem I'm having with using a lamp socket is for some reason 2 of my dragons like to jump around thier cage, I wouldn't want them to grab hold of the bulb and get burned or bust it. Thanks for the pic that's what I'm looking to do.

I considered mounting the puck onto some extruded aluminum square tube, then mounting the assembly to the cage top. I just never got around to that, mainly because I use these lights at 1/2 wattage or less. But that idea of an aluminum heat sink is a must if you plan on running the full 20 watts for any length of time. I measured well over 150 deg above it before when I left it on full for 15 minutes mounted in the plastic cage. Plastic cages can handle that just fine, but I still think a heat sink is best practice, and aluminum is the best heat sink material.

At full blast, I can measure 81 deg on the floor of the 12-inch tall cage. The room was about 73 deg. As you move closer to the puck, the temp goes up of course. At about 3 inches from the beam, it is too hot for comfort. The beam is rather narrow.
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Mark

Thanks for the info, I think I will experiment with one cage, if it doesn't work out I can always use the cage for a snake.