My father and I are making up some plans to build some cages out of,I beleive 1/2 in. plywood(standard home depot type). The tanks are going to be in sets of 4 built side to side as one long unit each being 30*18*18 in. They are going to have a 6 inch drawer bottom. All this said here is my question: What type of heating devices should I use? I was thinking of heat tape along bottom of drawers 12 inches long by 11 wide,is this wrong? Do I need a overhead heat source? The only other question is on thermostates, we were thinking about a bigapple thermostate (proportional),we plan on stacking four of our units on each other to form a tower, do I need a thermostate for each row of four or will one work for the whole thing, with the probe in the middle cage?
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Another heating question.(long sorry)
Replies (1)
Lets talk about your options.
1. Overhead heating in each compartment -
This is easily acheived with ceramic elements or red spot heat lamps. You can mount the light fixture onto an outdoor outlet box to the ceiling of each cage compartment.
What about temp control? The problem with only 1 controller and multiple cages is, what happens if the bulb burns out in the cage where the probe is? Bad news, because the sensor will sense cooler temps and provide power to the heaters to compensate, but the sensor will never see the heat.
Solution: Use a dimmer for all bulbs in a row of cages. Then, run that through 2 Ranco ON/OFF thermostats wired in series, with one probe in one cage and the other probe in another cage. The chances of two bulbs burning out at the same time is far less. Make sure you're thermostat can handle the wattage of all bulbs added up.
2. Heat tape under the drawers -
Easy if you have a space under for it. It can sit on a piece of styrene foam elevated to just below the drawer. The heat will still get through, and this gives you clearance so the drawer will not snag on the heat tape.
What about temp control here? Well, you can do as much heat tape on one controller as wattage limitations of the controller permit. Heat tape doesn't burn out if used correctly. However, if the connections aren't done right, one strip can lose power. Make sure all connections are good. You don't want the probe to be sitting on a heat strip that loses power when the other ones don't.
