Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I currently am looking to build a new rack to house a few B.P.s I own. Right now everyone is in their own tank and it's taking up too much room.
I'm not very good with wiring and electrical products and was wondering if I could skip the heat tape and just go with a UTH under the rubbermaid tubs instead? From the looks of the two products it appears to me that the UTH is simply heat tape already wired for people like me. But I'm worried about the temps. Will the UTH get hot enough to burn or melt either the plastic tub or my snakes?
Anyone with experience with this (UTH vs.Heat Tape) please reply, all opinions are more than welcome. Thanks.

You're right - a UTH is pre-wired heat tape that costs alot more than doing it yourself, but is essentially the same thing. ZooMed heat pads use a nichrome element but the watt density is similar to heat tape. So yes, you can use them instead of heat tape.

Any heater can burn, melt, etc if you don't use a controller. Get a dimmer (that 500 Watt model from ZooMed or whoever makes it is a good one) or buy a Big Apple Proportional controller for your heat pads (you can plug all the heat pads into an outlet strip, and then plug the strip into the controller or dimmer. Just make sure the total of the watts for all the heat pads are less than what the controller is rated for. Most controllers can run many many heat pads.)

Female BPs will easily need a larger cage than the standard sweater box. Males are OK in sweater boxes. You might want to consider that when choosing the boxes. Buy the boxes before making the rack!

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