Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering if anybody here has a 20 gallon long that they heat with flexwatt?

I want to run the flexwatt down the width of the cage to make a warm side for my terrarium and before I cut things up, I would like to find out if one piece of tape would be enough or will I need two pieces side by side? The flexwatt is 3 inches wide and my house temp stays around 65-68 degrees at it's coolest if that matters.

The flexwatt is going to be taped to melamine and the aquarium will sit on top of it.

Thanks

I have a 20L and use the 11" flexwatt. I use just one 1' peice. It works out nice becuase it's nearly the sme width as the tank and a little less then half the length. My apartment gets pretty hot and I'm able to keep a perfect gradient in the tank. 80 - 81 on the cool side and 88 - 90 on the hot side. I have my tank on a simple metal aquarium tank stand. I put pegboard between the stand and bottom of tank so there is ventilation on the bottom side of the flexwatt. Ventilation is important to prevent damage or worse yet, fire.

I highly recommend using a thermostat or thermostat and dimmer switch together. I tried using just the flexwatt and had trouble controling the temp due to the temp swings in my apartment.

Jason
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LEOS:
1.0 Tremper Giant Albino (Diesel)
0.1 High Yellow (Ayla)
0.1 Hypo (Red Sonja)
0.0.3 Juvies (Dremel, Ryobi & Mufasa)
R.I.P. (Conan)

CATS:
2.0 Maine Coons (Sam & Tye)

FIANCÉE:
0.1 Tall Blonde (Christine)

Thanks.

I wonder if I should put two pieces of 3 inch flexwatt side by side on the warm side of the tank running down the width of the tank?

I'm going by instructions that people use for building racks and I was going to elevate the tank off the flexwatt and have the flexwatt rest on melamine. Do you think that would be enough ventilation, a space between the tank and flexwatt?

Right now I only have a dimmer that I'm going to wire in. I'll have to buy a thermostat online.

I would do the two peices, side by side, with a 2" seperation. if your hot side isn't hot enough or large enough (not enough hot area) I'd add another strip. So you would have 3 peices side by side with 2 inch seperation. I went to home depot and bought rubber feet to put on the bottom of my tank. it raised the tank about 1/8" - 1/4" and I thought that was plenty of ventilation. If you have to wireup multiple peices of flexwatt to one plug, make sure you parallel wire them together.
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LEOS:
1.0 Tremper Giant Albino (Diesel)
0.1 High Yellow (Ayla)
0.1 Hypo (Red Sonja)
0.0.3 Juvies (Dremel, Ryobi & Mufasa)
R.I.P. (Conan)

CATS:
2.0 Maine Coons (Sam & Tye)

FIANCÉE:
0.1 Tall Blonde (Christine)

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