Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i can order some heat tape and cut it into smaller pieces any size i need correct? i read somewhere that u can only cut it at 1 foot intervals...which doesn't make sense to me
what do you use to cut it? and all i need is 1 rheostat per 2 shelves? no thermostats? and what is the difference between a rheostat and a light dimmer?
thanks

Rheostat and light dimmer are the same thing. When using flexwatt you need a thermostat because that stuff can get up to 110 degrees.
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0.1 Albino Leopard gecko (Lex)
0.0.1 ball python (felix)
1.1 feral cats (Fuzzy, and Bear; it used to be fuzzy, wuzzy, bear)

wouldn't the rheostat/dimmer keep it at the temperature i need?

Yea that is the purpoise of the dimmer...3" and 4" wide flex wat can be cut to any size but the 11" wide flexwatt can only be cut in 1ft. intervals...you were mostlikely reading about the 11" flex watt....
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-Bryan

The lamp dimmer just increases/decreases the amount of electricity running into the heat source. With a thermostat with a probe you place the probe in at the warm side and set the thermostat to whatever temp you want the warm side at then once the air temp gets to be the set temp the heat product turns off then when it cools down it turns on. Therefore making the temp at a constant set level. There are lots of people who use both a thermostat and dimmer with flexwatt because of a malfunction of one/other. If you have a lamp dimmer and the room temp goes up 5 degrees so does your cage.
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0.1 Albino Leopard gecko (Lex)
0.0.1 ball python (felix)
1.1 feral cats (Fuzzy, and Bear; it used to be fuzzy, wuzzy, bear)