Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Please help a newbie here. I'm buying a 332 Vision Cage and would love to know the best way to heat it. I've got some extra flex watt heat tape but am afraid to use it (had some issues with it years and years ago. I've got several ceramic bulbs, but again am afraid of the burning thing.

Whats the best way to heat this cage properly? Many thanks in advance.

Use 11"-wide Flexwatt under the cage, all the way across. If the cage sits on a hard floor, lay a piece of styrene foam insulation down first, then the heat tape then the cage. Use a dimmer or better yet a proportional controller. I like Big Apple Herp's controller alot. You will need to fix the sensor onto the heat tape, so either cut a notch out of the foam insulation for the sensor or leave some heat tape jutting out from under the cage to attach the sensor to.

If your room is cold, you'll need to also use a heat lamp or ceramic bulb to heat the air in the cage some. A cold cage with a warm floor only is fine for temperate zone colubrids but not for reptiles from warmer areas. Use a dimmer on the heat lamp or ceramic for best results.
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Mark

Hi Curt -

A woma and a new Vision cage? Sounds like a nice situation!

I don’t light my cages or heat my Visions from above with bulbs or ceramic heat emitters. When one burns out in a lower cage, it’s a pain to unstack whatever is sitting above. And I guess on some level (not entirely irrational) I’m afraid of the ultra high temperatures those CHE’S attain. Another option for you to consider would be a small radiant heat panel. I use the ones from Pro Products and am quite satisfied. If your room stays above around 75 degrees (I’d feel safer with 78 degrees), you probably won’t have to add radiant heat from above in addition to belly heat.

If you’re still feeling nervous about Flexwatt, consider the use of a product like Ultratherm heat pads. They are the same as the T-Rex brand but less expensive through The Bean Farm (click here). I don’t know how much of the floor space in that cage your python will occupy, but I like to try to provide a thermal gradient from side to side instead of front to back (assuming a cage has a rectangular footprint, not a square one, of course). So I would lay the heat pad from front to back on one side of the cage if the snake was small enough. That allows for more of a gradient, at least in 4 to 6 foot long cages; it probably matters less in the 3 foot size. Definitely use a controller on all your heat sources. Like Mark, I like the Big Apple proportional thermostat and use a lot of them. Unlike Mark, I don’t place the thermostat’s heat sensor on top of the UTH. I drill a small hole in the side of the cage a few inches above the cage floor (for non-arboreal forms). If I’m heating with a heat panel overhead, I secure the probe at that level with tape outside the cage. If I’m using under cage heat, I can pull the probe in closer to the floor or tape it to the bottom of the cage.

Even though most of my Visions with pythons are heated by overhead heat panels, I vacillate regarding whether it’s better to provide belly heat or radiant heat (or a combination). I’ve heard it said that “heat’s heat”, but I don’t believe it is as simple as that. The main thing to factor in is how cold the ambient will be at the coldest time of the year. Obviously, you don’t want to have to crank the UTH to levels which might burn the python in an attempt to overcome too-cool ambient temperatures.

One last thing not related to heat. I get the impression this is your first Vision cage. So be prepared for the twin devils of the front lips of those cages. The snakes often crap underneath the lower one - hard to see and messy to clean out. And many like to crawl up and across the upper one – and fall down repeatedly with a loud thud. I’ve truly wondered whether or not a few of my snakes have broken ribs as a result.

Have fun.
-Joan

I'll put it to good use. So far so good, I bought the Woma yesterday, he's doing well, albeit a bit snippy. What a beautiful animal he is. I'm heating the cage right now with a night time T-Rex Bulb, and will do the proper heating this weekend. Cheers!

I too, am about to set up four new vision cages for my milksnakes and I've been a bit confused by many of the heat pads. Most of the adhesive ones say not to use on a non-glass enclosures.. are the beanfarm ones adhesive or no?
A related question... I was planning on using an ExoTerra adhesive pad on glass aquarium for another milk, but it suggests that they shouldn't be used without a substrate for risk of burning. Since the milks tend to burrow down a great deal, should I not use this kind of pad with my glass tank/milksnake combination?
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-Paul

No adhesive on those. Either slip them under the cage or use aluminum tape to hold them on.

As for Exoterra or any stick-on heat mat - you must use a temperature controller of some sort (dimmer or proportional controller like Big Apple Herp's proportional controller) to make sure the surface of the glass does not reach temps too high. A substrate does help dissipate the heat, but wood substrates like aspen simply insulate the area and trap heat below. The result is a very hot glass surface unless you dim it down.

Another idea is to elevate the cage off of the pad - i.e. don't stick it on, just lay it under. Yet another idea, put the pad under slate tiles and put the cage on top of the tiles. You'll just have to see what works for you. A dimmer is the easiest way.

I use ExoTerra pads on a Vision. Just use temperature control and it will be fine.

Hey here's a question I just thought of regarding Exo-terra pads and visions.
What do you do about the little ridges on the bottom of the vision.. the ones used to "lock" into the vision beneath it? The Visions that I have are 24" x 22" and I can't imagine any size pad sticking on there without overlapping one of those ridges. IS this o.k.? I'd imagine the pad needs to be stuck on perfectly flat.
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-Paul

Are these things generally capable of controlling multiple units? I've got four visions (and will probably have twice that eventually) that are all housing the same species. Could I just run a power strip through Big Apple's model? or would I need that power booster accessory of theirs as well?
Thanks for your help, btw. Much appreciated.
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-Paul

Yes, all the proportional controllers can accommodate multiple units. You just have to make sure that when you add up the wattage of everything you have connected to one, you don’t exceed the maximum load allowed. In the case of the basic Big Apple unit (without power boost) that would be 300 watts. The location of the socket where you plug in your heating device(s) on this unit is so confined that it is more convenient to run an extension cord off of it and then hook up the devices to that. A power strip works fine, but you’ll probably need a 3 x 2 wire adapter since most power strips are grounded, but these heaters don’t need to be, so the socket is for 2 prong plugs.

The issue I have with running multiple cages off of one controller is that if your cages are stacked vertically, then there can be a fairly large temperature differential between the top and bottom cages, especially in the wintertime. One of the ways I deal with that is to place different species in different levels, so, colubrids at the bottom and pythons at the top.

-Joan

Hi Paul –

Ditto what Mark says above. Many of the promotional materials on these UTH’s stress how safe they are due to their relatively low maximum temperatures. I notice the Bean Farm quotes a range of 65 to 95 degrees “depending on exterior temperature.” Well, this may be so if you plug one in and leave it out in the open with nothing sitting on top of it. But of course, that’s not how these things are used (or marketed). I believe most of these products reach temperatures unregulated which can easily burn reptiles. I’ve measured 120 degrees (probably higher, I just can’t recall) beneath the substrate in a Vision cage placed directly on top of an Ultratherm. I believe the situation would be similar with most of the brands typically found for sale in pet stores. Please understand, I do not consider the capacity to reach higher temperatures a liability for my set-ups because I make sure I monitor and regulate the output. One can always dial down; one can’t make something get hotter than it was designed to be.

Determining what the actual temperatures we are providing (or not) is so critical to the health of most herps we keep that I think everyone should consider getting an infrared thermometer, especially now that their prices are so reasonable.

-Joan