Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I took the plunge and decided to buy the heat rope that they advertise on bigappleherp.com. I bought the 27 foot length and a thermostat to go with it (need either the thermostat or a dimmer or something since it will run really hot without it). No wiring required, just place it where you want it and plug it in.

So far, it is working great, but depending on your set up, seems like it could be tricky to get laid out the way you want it. We have a simple wire stand with 3 shelves. The top shelf has an 20 gal Long aquarium, and I think you would need to actually tape this stuff to the bottom to get contact with the glass. I am not using this on the aquarium since it was just easier to use the day and night heat lamp I already had. The lower shelves are for the sweater boxes, and it was really easy to run the heat rope across the back 1/3 or so of each shelf. I secured it with some twist ties (cheap) periodically and it is very easy to rearrange. It seems to have brought everything to the correct temperature just fine, but I need to monitor it for awhile to be sure. If you had a wood rack, you would need to find a way to secure it to each shelf without damaging the rope. I think that would be possible, but I am not sure what would work best since I am afraid tape would get messy if you tried to move it later.

I liked this choice because it was relatively economical, easy to move around in different configurations, didn't require any wiring, and seems very safe to me since it is very heavily insulated (designed to be used outdoors and moist areas too). I have never used FlexWatt tape so I have no idea how the two compare.

Sheryl

How far apart do you have to space it in order to get the temps right when you run it back? I take it you went from one end to the other a couple times right or did you zig zag back and forth? I bet if you routered slots in the wood for it it would work great in wood racks.

I ran it end to end, but I thing zig zagging would have workded fine too. The people at bigappleherp told me to make them about 1" apart so that is about what I did, although I erred on the side of making them further apart. Mine are probably 1 to 1.5" apart After working with it, I would say the important thing is that it makes contact with the container, so don't router too deep of a groove for it. It seems pretty durable, but I didn't like the idea of something heavy like an aquarium edge pinching it. The sweater boxes seem to me to be no problem.

I called bigapple before ordering and asked to talk to someone about it. The guy was knowledgable and everything he said turned out to be right. The only piece of advice I didn't follow, is that he suggested one rope for each shelf. That added a lot to the cost and I couldn't see any logical reason for it. I bought the longer one and just ran it down the back of the shelving to get to the lower shelf.