Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have my tortoise in a 55 gallon Rubbermaid container with aspen and timothy hay bedding. She has a heat lamp and a UV lamp above her. The lid has been cut out and chicken wire installed in the hole so the lamps sit right on top of the wire. She stays warm enough in the daytime from the lamps and the ambient heat in the house but at night, I think it is getting too cool for her...

My question is, can you put an under the tank heat pad on the bottom of a plastic rubbermaid container? It's sitting on the floor right now, but we can change that if necessary.

If that won't work, what other suggestions do you guys/gals have?

You can, Sarah, but you need to use a thermostat or dimmer to keep the temps down. I know some people don't agree with the use of UTHs for torts, but I do have one I use only at night, because my indoor winter temps can go as low as 58 degrees. I keep it set quite low, though--just enough to keep him from getting too cold. You could also use a ceramic heater set on a thermostat. I always have extra UTHs because of my snakes, so I just use that.

HTH
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Sohni
Northern California

0.1 Baja de L.A. Rosy Boa
0.1 Okeetee Corn Snake
1.1 Rubber Boas
1.0 Leopard Gecko
0.0.1 Hermann's Tortoise
plus my kids' herps:
0.0.1 California King Snake
1.0 Mexican Rosy Boa
0.1 Leopard Gecko

That's what we bird people call pet birds that are kept too warm all the time and never allowed to feel temperatures that they would normally experience in the wild. Such birds are actually more suseptable to disease than the ones that are allowed to experience colder temperatures at night. This mostly happens to finches which are erronously believed to be unable to handle cool weather. As I said in the last post, the key is to make sure that the animal is allowed access to warmth once the sun comes up, just as it would in the wild.

I have found the same principles apply to reptiles. All animals are capable of adaptation to a certain degree.

No hothouse flowers!

So is 68 or so at night too cold? Last night the house got even colder than that I think. The herp room is a tiny bit warmer when the door is kept closed but not by much.

You can read my posts at the top of the forum I just posted, but
your tortoise is on the floor level in a cold room.
I'm telling you that's too cold and to get a ceramic heater
to keep it warmer at night. Is it worth the risk or not, that's
up to you.

birds are warm-blooded and able to produce heat, reptiles can't
I'm sure you know that. However if you believe that birds are
modern day reptiles-dinos then this is another pointless topic.

i use a black light bulb at night as well as a uth on one side of my torts enclosure and the other side is cooler so she can bask when she wants to both sides have a hidebox as well

Another option is heat rope from big apple herp. I tried this out in a tub where I'm raising some bryoogi hatchlings and it works out really well. The UTH will give an even heat spread across the whole surface. With the heat rope, you can weave the rope around any way you want, limitless possibilities for thermal gradients. Plus it's water proof, so you can use it inside the enclosure. Requires a thermostat though.

I use it inside the tub, held to the sides with tape. This way I'm heating the air inside the tub, not the substrate. Much more natural effect that way.

for at night on a thermostat set to 78. They don't need to
be breathing in such cold air at night and get chilled. An
undertank heater wouldn't suffice to heat the surrounding air,
and undertank heating is not the best way to warm up any tortoise
except as a supplement to an extremely large animal if necessary.

I keep my thermostat in the house at 75, how/where do you people
live like that and why freeze yourselves?

np
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Sohni
Northern California

0.1 Baja de L.A. Rosy Boa
0.1 Okeetee Corn Snake
1.1 Rubber Boas
1.0 Leopard Gecko
0.0.1 Hermann's Tortoise
plus my kids' herps:
0.0.1 California King Snake
1.0 Mexican Rosy Boa
0.1 Leopard Gecko

Hothouse flowers, the lot of ya!!!!

I have two reasons for keeping the thermostat so low. Both involve my husband.

I swear he thinks he would pass out from heat exhaustion if I bumped it up to 72... that or his wallet would start screaming from the pain of our disgustingly large heating bill.

at my office this other inspector has a digital thermometer
at his desk (it's huge!) so that everybody can see how "HOT"
it is in there - there's nothing we can do to control it,
cause it's City Hall, and it's centrally controlled. It's 78.
He is dying every day. So are three other guys in my
department, and of course the ladies up front are freezing -
it is cooler up front somehow though.
This guy drives with the A/C on and short sleeves (won't
bring a jacket) and it's 30's in the morning.

My husband croaks in the heat too, what's with these guys? lol!

I of course could sleep with 75 F temps, in sweat pants,
long sleeved sweat shirt with a wool blanket in addition to
the regular blanket in a waterbed

When I stayed overnight at the Fire Dept. bunkhouse they told
me to wear less to stay warm, I couldn't believe it, but it
actually worked, with shorts in a sleeping bag I was toasty.
It's weird.

My opinions are somewhat unconventional on this topic, but I can assure you it is not getting too cold in your house at night for your tortoise to handle. Many people believe that tortoises need to be kept very warm at all times. This just isn't true, and in fact can be harmful to them. All tortoises come from areas that get much colder at night than it does during the day. In Northern Africa, where the sulcata is from, the nights in winter routinely get into the 40s at night. They will go into their burrows and slow down their matabolism to deal with it and suffer no harmful effects. It is an adaptation all tortoises have.

I doubt your house is getting colder than the low 40s, so you have nothing to worry about as long as you allow the animal to warm up under the heatlamp in the morning. Contrary to what most people believe, it is virtually impossible for a tortoise to heat itself from underneath. They have heat-collecting chambers just under the TOP of their shells which act like solar panels to warm the blood. They have none of these chambers on the bottom and cannot collect heat from heaters beneath the enclosure.

It is probably a bit too generalized to talk about 'tortoises'.
There are plenty of tropical species, that do not experience the kind of temperature drops during the night, that you mention. And they would neither enjoy nor thrive under the conditions you are recommending.
When giving recommendations in terms of optimum temps it is definitely necessary to specify the species they are meant for.

Having lived in South America (Brazil), I can tell you that there is a definite cooling off at night (especially inland), and there is an obvious seasonal difference in temps. Of course, the drops aren't as drastic as they are here, but tropical regions of the world are by no means at a constant temperature. I know winter temps in Rio de Janeiro can go into the 60s.

I can't speak for the specific habitats of tropical tortoise species, but I do think it would be just as harmful to maintain them at a constant high temperature as it would be to drop the temps too low. I think we can all agree that at least some sort of night drop is beneficial.
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Sohni
Northern California

0.1 Baja de L.A. Rosy Boa
0.1 Okeetee Corn Snake
1.1 Rubber Boas
1.0 Leopard Gecko
0.0.1 Hermann's Tortoise
plus my kids' herps:
0.0.1 California King Snake
1.0 Mexican Rosy Boa
0.1 Leopard Gecko