Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is long and rambling, but I want to make sure I provide all the info. I just recently expanded Garnet's living space; she was housed in about half of a 4x2x2 melamine glass front tank, and I've just upped the space to 3/4 of the tank (I use a divider). With the extra space and fall coming on, I wanted to look into using an undertank heater. Important to note - because I was worried about the melamine swelling and cracking from the humidty, we cut and sealed into place a plexiglass floor. Now, will a UTH work with that or would it just create a risk of melting the plexi? I didn't really want to use overhead heat, because Garnet is still small enough, and has a habit of climbing into the lighting cage despite my sewing fine-gauge mesh around the whole thing. I'm afraid she'll burn herself on the bulb if I ever use it. I can't figure out how to keep her out. I have a thermostat and a UTH ready to go, I just want to make sure I'm not creating more trouble! Another note - Her tank is on the bottom of a row of three; the two above are pythons and their tanks are heated. I haven't really used heat with her at all yet because I live in a mild climate and the ambient temps in her tanks stay in the high 70's, occasionally going as high as 81-82 on a warm day. I have a/c and heat. I think the popularity of the light cage is based on the ceiling of the tank getting some of the excess heat from the ones above it. What should I do?
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

Cynthia,
....You most likely do not need to do anything more to heat the cage. Overall cage temperature in the high 70s is warm enough. If the room gets cooler during coming months and the heat in the Pythons cages is thermostatically controlled the thermostat will increase the heat in the Python cage and probably keep the BRB cage warm enough. On the other hand. If the room gets very cold during the winter and the Python cage does not heat the BRB cage enough you could use an undetank heater but a well controlled ceramic heat emitter inside the cage might be a better choice. Melamine is pretty good insulation and so a lot of the heat energy from an undertank heater would not get into the cage and would be wasted. A ceramic heat emitter attached inside a top corner of the cage would need to be controlled with a proportional thermostat and a dimmer so that it would never get hot but would instead just get warm, perhaps 95 degress on the surface of the ceramic which would provide a warm spot in the low 80s under the ceramic heat emitter. You could even do this with just a dimmer controlling the ceramic heat emitter and this would work fine as long as the room temperature did not fluctuate very much. All my plastic Vision cages are heated with underfloor flexwatt controlled with proportional thermostats and all my melamine cages are warmed with thermostatically ontrolled ceramic heat emitters.
Good luck,
Jeff

I'd shied away from ceramic heaters for her because I was told that it would dry out the air too much. Have you ever had that kind of problem?
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

IMO the BEST heating option for a wood cage is a Radiant Heat Panel (RHP) attached to the ceiling and controlled by a proportional thermostat. Any under tank heater below the melamine will be mostly useless. Sandwiching it between the melamine and the plexi subfloor would work better but would require removing the plexi to install and possibly in the future replace. Overhead ceramics can work as Jeff described but even with a proportional they can get very warm, even hot so have to make 100% certain the snake cannot get close. Even more so if you use any night drop feature as the morning temp increase will cause more power than usual to be applied to the heat element.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

How is it that I didn't know radiant heat panels existed?! What brand do you recommend?
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

I've bought from Pro-products.com in the past, very helpful. You can't just order one though, they will ask several questions about your cage, animal and house temps to help you select the right one.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

I just got off the phone with Pro-Products, asking them about their radiant heat panels (they look awesome btw), and I opened up a fortune cookie which reads "The rainbow's treasures will soon belong to you." I guess Garnet wants Pro-Products LOL!
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

Way too funny!!!!
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats