Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a question about my heat source. I have a UTH and a bulb overhead on one side. Does it hurt to use a regular household incadescent bulb or should I stay with the special reptile "blue" bulb which is about $6.00?

I am also in PA so our fall/winter weather is pretty rough. If I turn the light off during the night, the temp drops to about 70 which is too low, so does it hurt to let the light on 24/7? By letting it on 24/7, my ball will not get it's so called photo period. During the summer when I would turn the light off each night, he would come out of his hide and become very active. Now, when I let the light on, he seldom comes out.

Any Ideas?

to a ceramic heat emitter. It is not natural for them to have a light on 24/7, especially since they are nocturnal. I would suggest either using a black or red low-intensity bulb, or a CHE. The CHE's are about $34 here, but they last a lot longer than the 4 weeks the light bulbs were lasting me!
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Randy
www.ball-pythons.net

70 is just a few degrees too cold. If you could increase the temp in the house a few degrees, you wont have to use a light heat source at all, other than your UTH. Then can safely drop to 73 during the night hours. My house is kept at about 74 and I have nothing on them at night, not even my heat tape, and that's for 12 hours on, and 12 hours off.

I'm currently using a red heat bulb on a timer circuit. Living in Tucson, our daytime temperatures are still running more than sufficient to keep the snake comfortable (been running in the 90's all week), but the overnight lows are now dropping into the low 60's and high 50's. Before winter, I'm planning on installing an UTH at the one end of the terrarium and if necessary I'll drape a heavy towel or other such cloth over most of the terrarium to help hold heat in.

My biggest problem right now is just keeping the humidity in the terrarium up where the snake likes it. We're currently running maybe 40 - 50% humidity right now. I've been artificially inducing humidity into the terrarium, but I need to come up with a better system than what I'm currently using.