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This might sound like a stupid question, but could someone help me out with the heat generated by my lightbuld. I have a 20 gallon tank, and being that our house is fairly cool (we live up north in Canada where right now the average temp. in our house is 65-70 degrees), I bought a 150 Watt Daylight bulb and 150 Watt red night bulb, but found that the daylight bulb heated up the enclosure VERY fast, to the point where the rocks were uncomfortably hot to touch. I use a UTH, so I turned it off and just turned on the red one, but will need one for tommorrow...but I don't want to have to go buy god only knows how many before finally getting it right, so could someone suggest a wattage for me...thanks

but it might not be the cheapest one… I’d recommend buying a digital thermometer, the common indoor/outdoor type, that has a temperature probe. You’ll place the probe in the warmest area of the tank. Next you need to buy a light dimmer, also know as a rheostat. Plug the red bulb you already have into the dimmer, then the dimmer plugs into the wall.

You can adjust the dimmer a few times a year to keep the temperatures consistent; you are aiming for 90 degrees at the hot spot, and 75-80 in the rest of the cage. The 90 degree hot spot is what is really important for your gecko to thermoregulation. This setup should cost around $35 US, but is well worth the expense to keep your leos healthy and happy. Hope this helps,

DaveCable

Ah yes the Great Candian North.....Mother Nature is playing tricks on us....that warm spell we had in southern Ontario was just to nice and now its back to being COLD!!!! It was wonderful to see the grass while it lasted though LOL

To keep my tanks warm i cranked up the heat in the gecko room so its nice and toasty (have to be careful of my crested geckos though as they like room temps). My 40 gal tank has a red bulb on at night although i just looked and i don't see a wattage....
At night it usually reads about 84 but with the light it gets up to 90 no problem. Only problem is that if the temps warm up in the house the bulb can make the hot end above 90 so it goes off in the morning (timers are a wonderful thing hehe)
I have turned up the rheostats for all of my under tank heaters and that seems to be working well, however in Karmas tank, i've got a digital thermometer with a probe that says the temps in her laying box is a max. of 79 degrees. The tile bottom says 88 though so I'm going to remove the tile from the tanks and replace with papertowels for now. That will hopefully allow the temps to rise up a bit. When i got access to another room down stairs (split basement) i should have put the geckos into the smaller room because it would have been easier and cheaper to heat. But my 8' gecko unit would be a tight fit in there. I have three different units holding geckos so i'm going to close off the back to help retain heat. I've just come off a week of overnight shifts so my mind is a bit cloudy and my space in both my bedroom and gecko room is well.....disasterous LOL

Sorry to ramble, it didn't help you out much... if you just want to raise the air temps a bit, try a low wattage bulb. 150 is a bit high for a 20 gal. And i agree with Dave, a rheostat controlling the temps of your UTH is best, but don't put a UTH AND light on the same one, thats what the instructions say anyways.

Take care and keep warm
Red

>>This might sound like a stupid question, but could someone help me out with the heat generated by my lightbuld. I have a 20 gallon tank, and being that our house is fairly cool (we live up north in Canada where right now the average temp. in our house is 65-70 degrees), I bought a 150 Watt Daylight bulb and 150 Watt red night bulb, but found that the daylight bulb heated up the enclosure VERY fast, to the point where the rocks were uncomfortably hot to touch. I use a UTH, so I turned it off and just turned on the red one, but will need one for tommorrow...but I don't want to have to go buy god only knows how many before finally getting it right, so could someone suggest a wattage for me...thanks
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Crested Gecko Zeek:1.0, Ziggy and Zeus
LEOS: Boo: 1.0 normal , Bronx & Nala: 1.1 blizzard,
Lily: 0.1 patternless, Abby: 0.1 albino, Zoe: 0.1 reduced pattern, Dot: 0.1 hypo
New Girls: Flame, Karma, Bubbles and Bell pics coming soon
Chip: 1.0 papillion (small dog)

All my temps are currently coming from overhead. I have a UTH but it gets to hot. I need that dimmer or rheostat. Ive seen em online but wondered what you use and where you got it? Also do you maintain a steady temp 24/7 under the tank and use heat over top during the day as well? Or overhead heat in the day and UTH at night? Im a lil confused, not unusual with me tho

Thanks