Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This will be my first winter with my female leo, and I'm wondering if there are any things I can do to help keep the heat in her tank during the colder months. I'm a college student living w/ 3 other students in a rental property, so we won't be blasting the heat all winter (in an attempt to save cash).

I currently have her in a 20long, with a 7x12 UTH and a 100W ceramic heater above. The tank's covered w/ a screen top. These two worked great during the summer, but i'm afraid when the house temps get down around 65 or so, i'll lose a lot of heat from her tank.

What can I do (besides just turning the UTH and heater on full blast) to retain some heat? Any home remedies?

Thanks.

cover the top with a towel and it should retain heat well,thats what i did with my leos which are in a basement room with me and it works great keeping the tanks at 88-91f using a 60watt bulb.

kali
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1.3 Leopard Gecko's
1.0 mali uromastyx

With the 100w heater and under tank heater, you should be producing plenty of heat even in winter, so the trick is keeping the heat in. I'd suggest a sheet of styrofoam under the tank (and under the UTH of course). Some UTHs heat both top and bottom. This will direct all the heat up, where you want it. Cardboard is a pretty good insulator (well, better than glass anyway) so you might consider surrounding the lower part of the tank with cardboard sized to fit. You can paint it to look better, and black absorbs heat so that might help too. The screen top may cause a lot of heat loss, so perhaps try cardboard over most of that too, except for the area the heat lamp is in.

These are just suggestions, perhaps they'll spark an idea that does the trick. Good luck to you, and to you leo!

>>I currently have her in a 20long, with a 7x12 UTH and a 100W ceramic heater above. The tank's covered w/ a screen top. These two worked great during the summer, but i'm afraid when the house temps get down around 65 or so, i'll lose a lot of heat from her tank.
>>
>>What can I do (besides just turning the UTH and heater on full blast) to retain some heat? Any home remedies?
>>
>>Thanks.
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Andrea A.

Covering the UTH is exactlly what they tell you not to do. Doing so will trap too much heat and either cause the temperature to rise too much, or it will damage the UTH, either way it is not a good idea. Most UTH's give you rubber feet to put on the bottom of your tank to help promote airflow underthe tank to keep overheating from happening. Covering the UTH kinda defeats the purpose.

Cardboard is a good insulator, but only corrigated (sp?) cardboard. It's not the cardboard itself that insulates well, but the air inbetween the sheets of cardboard. This acts much in the same way as any double pane window works to keep your house warmer/cooler. I have heard of cardboard specifically sold for tanks, it has a background of sorts on it. I myself haven't been able to locate any, but i've been told it exists. If it doesn't, you could just cut up a cardboard box and adhere any background you can find to it.

Hope that helped

Sean

It doesn't make sense to me that some would work differently, but that must be the case since mine suggested putting insulated foam under it to conserve heat. Of course, it is important to actually check the temperature. I did not mean to suggest any measures should be taken without checking the results.

>>Covering the UTH is exactlly what they tell you not to do.
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Andrea A.

The main reason not to cover them is because the heat may build up to such a level that it could actually cause the glass bottom of your tank to crack. Also, heat rises, so putting something on the bottom of the tank won't do much, atleast I don't think it will. I think it's better to focus on the walls and specifically the top of the tank. Use something that reflects the heat back down into the tank.

I know that sand does a good job of absorbing and slowly emitting heat.

What if i split the substrate into two sections. the warm half is an inch of reptile sand, or regular play sand, whatever is best. then the cool half is the normal paper towel substrate. I could avoid the impaction issue by feeding her on the cool side.

Then the UTH will heat up the sand and the sand will absorb all the heat, making the sand nice and warm...warmer and more evenly heated than just having the UTH and paper towels.

Would something like this work?