Reptile & Amphibian Forums

If a thermostat has only one probe, is it possible to use it for multiple cages? I saw some for sale on the boaphile page and they had entire surge protectors attached to them, and it seemed a bit useless if they only have one probe.
eliot stone
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1.1 Cape York Spotted Pythons
1.1 Suriname Red Tailed Boas
and always looking for more!

They use two probes one for max and one for min. The max goes in the top cage and min in the bottom. Boaphile racks transmit heat very well. With it setup that way all cages in between will be within the same temp region. Understand?
Jeremy

bighurt i think your confused on how the double thermostats function.if you were to use this arrangement the probes would be placed in the same location.if for example you set the first thermostat at 85 (they are wired in series)you would then set the second at 88 or so.in the unlikely event the first thermostat failed and stuck wide open the second thermostat would take over and keep the heat from rising to a possibly dangerous level.it's like people who skydive,they have a second chute as backup.
to the original poster,you could have a rack that has 1 or 2 levels to a plug in.that way you would only plug in or use the levels that you need at a time.in that case you would use a power strip wired to a single thermostat.

I don't know what bighurt is talking about, so read on:
One thermostat has one probe. That is correct. The probe can only go in one cage. But, the output of the thermostat can be connected to as many cages/heaters as wattage ratings allow. Is this smart? Well, only if you make sure that the cage where the probe is has a heater that is working and does not burn out (if it is a light for example) or never is unplugged. If that were to happen, your probe would be in a cold cage and the other cages's heaters would be full ON and not controlled properly.

Example: You have one cage with Flexwatt and the thermostat on that. Now you buy 4 more cages with the same heater (Flexwatt) as the first cage. You can plug in those 4 additional cage heaters into the first thermostat.

Obviously, the best setup is one thermostat per cage, but that gets awefully expensive if you have a say 10 cages.
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Mark

Hi Eliot,

You can use 1 proportional thermostat per as many identical cages/set-ups as the wattage with allow. Helix has 500 watt modules, so You are limited to 500 watts until You have to add another module.
If the setups/cages are not identical (or very close) then You would want a different thermostat for each TYPE of set-up.

The dual Probes/thermostats is exactly as stated earlier--a BACK_UPthen your #2 would maintain the temp at 88F, and keep the heat source (which would otherwise now be running full blast) from cooking whatever its heating (animals, eggs, etc)
If You were monitoring say 10 identical cage set-ups: Probe one would go into and monitor the heat source in one cage, and probe do would do the same in a DIFFERENT cage. Its beyond unlikely that BOTH heat sources and/or BOTH thermostats are going to fail at the same time.

I have a 100F shut-off module with my Helix that handles 1500 Watts. If temps--for any reason reach 100F--->it shuts down.
The new double probe is probably better, especially with incubators, but the Helix way works too.

HTH

Hi Eliot,

You can use 1 proportional thermostat per as many identical cages/set-ups as the wattage with allow. Helix has 500 watt modules, so You are limited to 500 watts until You have to add another module.
If the setups/cages are not identical (or very close) then You would want a different thermostat for each TYPE of set-up.

The dual Probes/thermostats is exactly as stated earlier--a BACK-UP--That's it.
Let's say you had your #1(working) set at 85F and your #2(backup) set at 88F. If your #1 failed wide open--then your #2 would maintain the temp at 88F, and keep the heat source (which would otherwise now be running full blast) from cooking whatever its heating (animals, eggs, etc)
If You were monitoring say 10 identical cage set-ups: Probe #1 would go into and monitor the heat source in one cage, and probe #2 would do the same in a DIFFERENT cage. Its beyond unlikely that BOTH heat sources and/or BOTH thermostats are going to fail at the same time.

I have a 100F shut-off module with my Helix that handles 1500 Watts. If temps--for any reason reach 100F--->it shuts down.
The new double probe is probably better, especially with incubators, but the Helix way works too.

HTH