Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am building some cages out of MDF according to Greg Maxwell's design on his Green Tree Python Website. I'd like to use these cages for Rainbow Boas. I have always heated my cages from below with flex-watt, but I am considering switching over to Pro products radiant heat panels. In a cage that is 38" x 24" x 24" will a heat panel mounted at the top of one end provide a gradient appropriate for a terrestrial snake like the rainbow boas? If anyone has experience with this I'd love to hear from you. Thanks,

Mike

>>I am building some cages out of MDF according to Greg Maxwell's design on his Green Tree Python Website. I'd like to use these cages for Rainbow Boas. I have always heated my cages from below with flex-watt, but I am considering switching over to Pro products radiant heat panels. In a cage that is 38" x 24" x 24" will a heat panel mounted at the top of one end provide a gradient appropriate for a terrestrial snake like the rainbow boas? If anyone has experience with this I'd love to hear from you. Thanks,

I use Helix radiant heat panels and my cages are 18" tall. The further away from the panel you care, the less heat you get. When I hold my hand near the floor of my cages, it is noticably cooler than it is when you're within 12" of the heat panel. Still more than adequate, but with an even taller cage you might have problems.

Best bet is to e-mail Bob Pound at Pro Products and see what he has to say. In my case, I don't regret going with an 18" tall cage rather than 24"...

now ill be the first to tell you i know nothing about boas - what temperatures do they need? I have radiant heat panels on all my wood cages (one chondro, 3 colubrids), and there seems to be no problem with heating the floor.

do rainbow boas climb at all? If not, why are you building it 24" high? I'd build it 16 high - that way you can get the most out of the wood.

i built all mine 48" long, 24" high and 24" deep. my colubrids love to climb so its well worth it to have the vertical room, however if they didn't i would have built them 16" high.
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-Chris

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Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
0.1 Texas Bairdi (Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)
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