Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all,
I am currently building a bookcase type display cage for my critters. It will be 6' tall, 4'wide, and 2' deep. It will contain 4 equaly spaced "shelves" which will give me 5 cages, all with sliding plexi glass fronts. I am planning on using Flexwatt 11" wide heat tape strips on one end wired to a thermostat. Now for the questions:
1. The shelves will be made of 3/4" plywood. For better heat transfer should I put the heat tape on the inside floor? If so do I need to cover it (aluminum foil, plexi glass, real glass)?
2. Have heard you must use a proportional thermostat with the heat tape. Is this correct? I was looking at the simple on/off models with the remote probe from ESU capable of handling 1000 watts. Will this work? Safety is a must!!!
Thanks in advance.

Well you definitely need to cover it with something. Will you have the tape cut into seperate peices for each level and how do you plan on wiring it, or more importantly where? You don't want the wiring in the cage which is why most people put it under each cage, but with your setup that will be hard to do. Basically your putting sliding doors on a rack system. A word of advice: with the width being 4' it will sag in the middle front and with your setup ( the bottom of one level being the top of the next) this could create a problem. Plus I noticed you were going to use plywood, I would use melamine. As far as thermostats I use the on/off thermos on all my heat tape setups and they work fine. If you are caging thousand dollar snakes sure spend some money on a thermostat, but I'm making the assumption that since your building a cage setup from plywood that your not caging expensive animals. What are you caging?? Hope I helped some

The heat tape will be on 1 end of each shelf. Will probably use melamine for shelves but plywood will be satisfactory for rest of enclosure. A good grade will look relatively nice when treated and trimmed out. If I make a door frame out of 1X2's for the front of each "cage" will that take care of the sag problem? I will be caging 1.0 Motley Corn and 0.1 Black Banded King.
Thanks for the help.

I wouldn't put Flexwatt on the floor of the cages. If using melamine shelves, you can attach Flexwatt under each floor (i.e. on the inside ceiling of each cage segment.) At least this way the animal won't be in direct contact and water spills won't be a safety concern. The heat will rise up through the melamine.

Also, for wood cages like that, I think heat/light bulbs work the best. Big Apple Herp sells bulb cages, and it is easy to put a ceramic fixture in the cages. Then you could use an ON/OFF thermostat like the one you mentioned. Use the smallest wattage bulb you can that will heat the cages.

Now, check out www.herpcages.com. You can get 36x12x12 cages for $100 that are just awesome, where you can use Flexwatt underneath. Worth a look.