Reptile & Amphibian Forums

at a local store they sell pipe heater for keeping your pipes from freezing. It has a built in thremostat which is placed on the pipe. Now I'm wondering if people are using this to heat there cages and if there are any tips or tricks. It comes in up to 30' lengths and would be ideal is i could use it because its on clearance. Sorry for sounding like such a newb. just want to explore differnt heating options.

Hi –

It’s a good thing you checked first. What you describe will work great if you have herps that you want to keep at about 34 degrees, but not much warmer than that.

Seriously, that kind of heat tape with the preinstalled thermostat will only come on and heat up when the temperature approaches freezing, so is no good for your desired use. I’ve heard people here ask about removing the thermostat so the tape would be always on and could be controlled by an external controller, but I don’t recall anyone saying that was such a great idea.

-Joan

These were exactly my thoughts. To bad. it was such a good price. Thankyou. Oh what about leaving the thermostat open to the air and leaving airspace under the cage? might trick it.

LOL

>>Oh what about leaving the thermostat open to the air and leaving airspace under the cage? might trick it.

That thermostat "knows" just what temperature it needs to function as designed.

Or, to put it another way - doesn't matter what "airspace" you leave - unless that air gets close to 32 degrees, that heat tape isn't coming on. And by that time, your herps should be almost frozen.

Joan is right, the pipe heating cable just won't work. I've looked into it as well. However, if you live in the right area you might find a hardware store selling heating cables used for preventing ice from forming in your gutters. It's usually no shorter than 30 ft. for starters but most of the time it has no thermostat although you can usually find thermostats sold with them. I priced it out as well at the Home Depots here in Chicago - the 30 ft cable was about $30. Not bad, but then I started looking at the ZooMed Heat Rope cable and found that due to the shorter lengths it was a better buy for my purposes. I currently run the heat rope down the back corner of three snake racks/caging units I have. I works pretty well to keep a roughly mid 80s hot spot on the one side of the cage.
-----
Matt Campbell
Animal Keeper, Small Mammal/Reptile House
Lincoln Park Zoo Chicago, Illinois

Assistant Curator
Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, Illinois