Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have been spending the last several weeks building a multi cage stack. Its taken me some time and a lot of patience. The two bottom cages are for my breeder males and the cages are 24"x48"x20" (DxLxH). On one side there are two light fixtures mounted to the ceiling and a 36" fluorescent light strip mounted on the top inside of a wall. now i heard that the flood lights are good for basking lights because they are pretty much the same as the reptile basking lights just cheaper and they throw out a lot of light. So i bought two 90watt halogen flood lights today to test out the temps. I put them in in one of the enclosure and it was pretty hot, so i took one out and replaced it with a 100w philips natural light (which doesnt put out much heat but they light the enclosure up very well). I put the probe for the thermometer directly under the bulb on the basking rock and the temps sored to around 130. But then i moved the probe approximately an 1" to the left and the temps went down to about 101-105 (which i want for the basking temp). So the flood light puts the really high intensity beam out, which i really like, but is very hot. Does any one have any suggestions for a basking light? Should i leave the set up like it is because all around that 1.5" circle of heat is about 101 F. Or should i downgrade the wattage to a 75 watt? I need lots of advice for this, i want these enclosures to be perfecto.

Thanks

It sounds like you really have the whole temperature thing under control. The best advice i've seen on Lighting/heating is http://www.anapsid.org/liteheat.html.
-Sara

130 is too hot... did you move the basking rock so it isn't in the 130 range? you said there was like 1-1/2" of the correct temp? so what about the rest of the lizard, is it in the baking zone or ???

Also, where is your UV source?

-Bonnie

keep the high wattage bulb and buy a dimmer to control the temperature. i think you can get a dimmer for like $6 at home depot. this way you can increase the heat in the basking spot in the winter and reduce the temperature in the summer.
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a free range dragon is a happy dragon

Ya i have been thinking about that but i wired the lights in each cage together on one line. So the basking light, bright light, and fluorescent light are all on one line for each cage. So if i used a dimmer wouldnt it dim the brightness of the fluorescent light and the other light?

My father's an electrician, so i know how these things work. basically if all of you lights are plugged into one outlet or timerstrip, and the dimmer is wired to that outlet, that means the whole out let would be affected by teh dimmer.

Yes, as the person so states being her father is an electrician and they know this stuff... If you put the dimmer on the line, it will adjust everything. But just to clarify, it is not good to have florescent lighting nor anything else which uses a ballast of some sort to be on a dimmer. This would also include the active UV lights etc.. being these are on a self contained ballast for a mercury vapor system. You may consider either re-wiring so whatever you are deciding to use as the main heat source is on a seperate line so you can use a dimmer, else get a flood light instead of the spot light so the heat is dispursed a little better then so confined to that 1.5" area. That is way too small and I would think would have similar issues as that of the hot rock sindrume of not convering the entire animal and therefor the animal sits in/under/on this super hot area to try to warm their entire body and ends up burning that small area which is receiving all the heat.