Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A few posts down, Billy (who has some awesome animals!) suggests that Pits do fine without a heat source. Back in the dark ages, the only snakes we really worried about providing a hot spot were tropical species. Pits grew, lived long lives and even reproduced. Was this just dumb luck? All of my Pits have a temp. gradient now, but how critical is that? Let's hear some pros and/or cons.
Preacher Pat

Pat,
Good question... I only provide a warm spot for gravid females. The rest of the time they do well without. Works for me but would like to hear others opinions. Ron
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The Crawl Space

As far as pits go there are two different temps that we basically try and work with. For the deppei, jani and capes we try and keep them at 74 - 78 degrees. For the rest we keep them at 79 - 82 degrees yer round except when brumating them. The animals a re grouped as mentioned above and the entire room is kept at those levels and they do fine for us. The lower cages stay and the reduced temps and the upper cages at the higher temps. Hope that helps, it works for us anyway.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms - Reptiles

i use ambient air for my colubrids which are almost all n. american and they do fine w/ nightly fluctuations. providing heat [to relatively small cages] only seems to stress them esp. pines i have found. they like it as cool as possible it seems........

given this question a lot of thought. I have come to believe that you have to meet certain conditions when housing reptiles, whether snakes or lizards. They are:

1. Housing has to be an appropriate for the size, activity requirements of your animal. Err on the big size if you can.

2. If housing is appropriate it will be possible to provide a warm/cool side for thermoregulation. An option I am thinking about and seems logical for thermoregulation and activity is the use of Reeves stacks.

3. At night I don't provide supplemental heat to my snakes. I am trying to approximate temps in summer and an appropriate light schedule for circadian rythym. My Tegu is the exception, He is in a large built cage and heat is provided 24/7 with lots of room for choice.

This is what works for my animals. They seem happy and active. I am open to suggestions and ideas. What do you think?

Mike B

Back in the dark ages, we used to use hot rocks, we never heard of hypo morphs, and we used to leave live rodents unattended in a snake's cage for hours at a time. Whatever heat solution we now use, I hope it's because we've learned a few things along the way and also learned from other people's experience.

As for me, I'll continue to give my animals a temperature gradient. It works for me and it works for Mother Nature... my snakes and I are happy.

not using heat. In fact I've stopped using heat all together in the summer and adjust the AC vent to allow just enough air flow to keep my snake room at 78-80. I think sometimes we misunderstand what a snake really needs to be successful and try to apply to much heat.

Try cooler..IMO it's better.

Russ

Hey Preacher Pat!

Thank you for the compliment!

Back when I bred kings, milks, and corns, I had my snakes scattered throughout the whole apt. I kept my temps high, around 82-84, while I sweated my butt off and paid a huge freaking electric bill.

That all changed when I got my first two pits: An Applegate gopher ( the snake morph that won me to pits forever!) and an orange Cape gopher. It changed cause my hobby changed and now I am totally into pits. It also changed cause those two snakes didn't do well and perished. Reason being, I had them too hot!

Then, over the next few years, I kept lowering until it is what it is now. During the summer, I have no heat on and my vent in the room is closed, making the temps a perfect 76-80. During the winter, my heat source is a long convection heater that is turned on the lowest it can go basically. It sucks the air up underneath it, and blows it out the top as warm air. Very safe way to do instead of a space heater type appliance, and the temp is made perfect.

Here is an example with my alterna. I took my baby Sanderson grayband outta the room and put it in our bedroom ( which is a little cooler than my snake room )to test and see if he would feed more steadily on a weekly basis, and he has. Before, it was every other week and now he is eating two pinks a week.

Now....for me and what works better is being cooler. Back when I was younger, I had heat rocks in EVERY cage, cords all over the place and it was a mess!

Unless the species calls for extreme temps, cooler for me seems to really work. BUT, I know people that using some more heat than I do works for them as well, but it seems in my experience, as far as pits, they do better cooler.

Great topic!!!!!

Take care!
Billy

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Genesis 1:1