Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just want to post a great review of the new Herpstat 4. I can’t list all incredibly cool things they programmed into it (& I even had to edit this to fit character limit), so I decided I would share how I used it to set up one of my Pseustes cages (photo below).

The upper right has a heat panel w/ probe by the rock on top of the hide basket. It is set to begin warming gradually up @ 5 am for 8 hours peaking at 97.9F by 1 pm where it stays for 3 hours & begins to gradually cool down f/ 4pm to 12am getting down to 77.7F. These gradual changes can be set evenly over a period of up to 10 hours, more like a typical day w/ sunrise & sunset w/ highs in the middle of the day & lows in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile a probe in the lower left is set on “cooling mode” to 70.7F f/ 9am to 9pm & 66.6F 9 pm to 9 am. To attempt to get close to these temps I have a fan pulling warm air out of a warm side vent & a fan blowing cool air into a cool end vent.

Every 5 hours a reading is taken for my humidity targeted between 75% & 85%. If during any check it is below this, my misting system (2 nozzles in center) will go off for 90 seconds. In addition, at 11:30 am & 7 pm, the system will mist for 90 seconds regardless of the humidity at the time.

I had my lighting set to have the LED lights on at 1% at night to mimic moderate moonlight & at 5:30 am to 8:45 am, the light will gradually brighten to 100% where they stay until 6:00 pm & fade back down to the 1% moonlight by 9:15 pm. Unfortunately my LED lights run on a 120v to 12v transformer & it can’t handle the dimming so I need to use straight 120v lights or find a transformer that is "dimable."

Everything I mentioned can be done on one H4 & I came nowhere close to using up the watt limit per output, so if I had more cages this size, I could have them all running the same way.

If there was an award for contribution to the Herp Keeper world, my vote would go to the Herpstat 4 after playing w/ this product for a day!

Kudos to you......good stuff....!!!!

(me...I turn the light on by hand each day, and check the temp and adjust accordingly...by hand...LOL....no tech here....!...

....good luck....!......(.I learned something also.)...
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........JY

The big thing I was trying to hype up was the new way of gradually increasing temperature like a natural day and night cycle. If a keeper has the time to increase their temperature and lower it back down 50 times a day, kudos to them : )

NO ...I turn it on once and off once....

....you ar the first I ever heard of trying to be this "natural" in heating techniques.....

like I said...I bow to you.........

...ball people get a rack, plug it in, and set it to a temp....maybe changing it in winter....(for the most part).....

Good Luck....
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........JY

Certainly don't bow to me. I would not be doing it quite so technically if the folks at Spyder Robotics didn't design such an awesome system that made it so easy, hence why I said the Herpstat 4 should get product of the year for the reptile community if there was such an award : )

While I would tend to agree the larger colubrids tend to require a little more detail orientation than ball pythons, I certainly see no reason why herp keepers across the board will not start taking advantage of this system and start seeing benefits in the health and well being of their animals.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Yeah...one day I want to get one.
The 400 watt rating PER plug is enough to sell me on it...haha.
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"What is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone,
men would die from great loneliness of spirit.
For what happens to the beasts,
soon happens to men.
All things are connected."

-Chief Seattle (Duwamish Tribe)

This is VERY NICE...It's the kind of setting I dream of for my future Emerald Tree Boa enclosure That I keep talking about (my son keeps asking me if I will EVER do it... SOME DAY, SOME DAY)
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Sed et serpens erat callidior cunctis animantibus terrae quae fecerat Dominus Deus...