Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a couple of Easterns that are almost 2 years old living in a rack system. About a third of their container is heated via heat tape to around 84 degrees. The rest of the cage is at room temp, which varies from about 72 at night, and rises to around 80 at midday.
Soon I am going to need to incubate a lot of king/milk eggs. I am considering just keeping the room temp a constant 80 degrees for incubation. Can anyone tell me if this would have any adverse effects on the Easterns?
Thanks in advance...

My experience is that the background temperature for easterns must be below 80 degrees. It is OK to have a hot spot or a warm area as long as they can thermoregulate. They need to be able to find a cool part of the environment, say mid 70's. In my experience, when the background temperature of large indigos reaches or exceeds 80 degrees, the animals suffer heat stress.

Your idea of incubating your eggs in a room at 80 or 82 degrees is a good one. But you need to keep your indigos in a cooler room.

I kind of had a feeling that might be the answer.
I reckon I'll just move one of the racks out of the herproom. The wife will just love that

btw, those hatchling pictures are awesome. Keep 'em coming.

80 is too hot to keep an indigo 24/7.
DT

I also concur. Robert is right on the money with this one. Heat not only kills, but can lead to a variety of problems, such as recurrent regurgitation of partially digested mice, rats or chicks. Ugh..ugh This happens to you once, take it from me, youll NEVER let the temps spike near 80 again. Worse than smelling my old drawers to see if they are still usable!

**Cheers*

Fred Albury
Aztec Reptiles

I can tell you for sure that when the temps start getting up around 85 f. they will start looking for a way out. When it gets up close to 90 f. they will literally freak out if they can't get away from it. I don't think they would last long at a constant temp of 90 degrees or more. They seem to enjoy being able to go from a warm spot of 85 or so to a cool spot of 75 or so whenever they want. It really helps to give them hide options in the warm area as well as the cool area, too.

I think if I had to keep them at a constant temp, I would choose a temp around 78 degrees.

Hell, I wish I could keep Easterns at all...

I have found that the Texans and the Cribos can tolerate somewhat warmer temps than the Easterns can.