Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Day temps (w/c): 95/82
Night temps : 93/80

First, I'm worried 95 is too hot for the warm side? I use a UTH stuck directly on the bottom of the tank. There is plenty of air flow as the tank bottom does not rest on anything (the stand is open). I us lizard liner for substrate. The UTH is set on a Rheostat on the absolute lowest setting w/o turning off. I don't know why the temp still gets so hot. Unless the fact that I attached and removed the UTH about 3 times before finally getting in the right spot - I don't know if this affected it's usual functioning? If this is too high, I'm wondering if I should ditch the Rheostat and put it on a Thermostat instead? Or get a new UTH?

I'm also wondering if it's a problem that I don't have a larger drop in temperature at night?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance.

...Basically you need to ditch or alter the lizard liner. It's just too thin to properly cusion the heat put off by a UTH. Try plugging a lamp into the rheostat and see if it dims the light, just to make sure everything is working right. But if it is, then I would just suggest taping several layers of newspaper to the glass directly above the UTH and then adding your substrate...whatever that may be. I personally use about 2-3 inches of a mixture of aspen and shredded coconut. Without a heat lamp, and the UTH on low, I get about 83 warm side. At about 2/3 power I get 93.