Reptile & Amphibian Forums

a friend of mine just picked up a new ball rack at hamburg and is having trouble with the heating. it uses 3" flexwatt belly heat and he has it hooked up to a helix set at 85 degrees( i think). anyway he says he's getting a serious temp. variation. supposedly 95 at the bottom and 85 at the top. he's even tried another helix to rule that out. could it be that its a bad batch of heat tape? i'm very concerned because i also picked up 1 of these racks and am planning to set it up in the coming week. responses are greatly appreciated.

Oddly I've only heard of top racks getting warmer than bottom racks not the other way around - where is he measuring his temps at and what is he using to do the measuring? Also where is he placing the thermostat probe? Could be that there is a problem with the heat tape but I'll leave that to people that have greater knowledge of heat tape than I do. maybe you should contact the rack manufacturer.
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Tosha

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the rack is a 4-3 split. 4 on bottom 3 on top. he's got the probe at the top of the bottom rack i believe. i agree about the temp variations normally being hotter at top,which is why i suspect there's a problem with the tape. he's using good radio shack temp guages with a probe and he knows what he's doing. he has a baby rack and a melamine adult rack both of which use back heat and neither have had the temperature variations.