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i have a custom made all glass cage even the floor is glass,but its glued to a thin sheet of plywood.im wondering if there is an under the cage heating system that any of you guys think could penitrate the thin plywood,glass,and about 1"of substrate(potting soil).reptile heating pads id say are out of the question,especially considering my cages dimentions(24"tall,18"wide and 18" deep)its almost totally enclosed in glass with the exception of a small area of the top that is screened(about 20 percent),but even the screened area is covered by lighting.anyway,im wondering if anyone thinks a human heating pad may work.they are pretty cheap,you can adjust the output and they get hotenough to maybe penitrate all those layers.anyway,thoughts???if not maybe another solution for heating???cant use ceramics because the top is totally filled up by the lighting,cant install heattape because its a natural planted vivarium and there is just no place to put it and still have it look good.i could maybe heat through the side glass of the cage but still dont know how to go about that.that really only leaves bottom heating but the cage is already planted so it must go on the outside.i dont need a very hot temp and low to mid 80's is fine.oh yea,i dont want to switch lighting to heatlights and go that route because its heavily planted and heatlights will burn the plants at the top(im currently using florecents).heres a photo

First what are the temps now? That will have a huge bearing on what we recommend.

Also do you use a false bottom for you water features or do you have a drain? My reasoning is that if we are only talking a few degrees then a aquarium water heater will raise the temps a little while creating a little more humidity.

Another idea if the temps are slightly lower than what you want is change the bulbs to a higher wattage.

Last with that much thermal mass in a cage any heat source even a smaller reptile undertank heater will raise the temps a few degrees.

But like I said we need a better of how much the temps need to change.
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"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

hey thanks for responding.ok now for the questions you asked.i do have a false bottom and i do have a waterfeature but the waterfall is selfcontained and not part of the false bottom.i generally dont keep my false bottom filled with water and basically drain it when it collects runoff water,so installing an underwater heater will not work.my room temps are currently around 75,so im looking to get my cage up 10 degrees,to 85.so what do you suggest??like i said i cant use light as a heat source becuase many of my plants get right close to the lights and they will burn that way(besides i need something to heat at night),i have no room inside,nor do i want to have ugly looking radiant heatpannels to effect the natural looking setup.i really cant think of anything but human heatpads,and i have heard of reptile keepers using them,just wanted a thumbs up from you guys or maybe another suggestion that im missing.

>>hey thanks for responding.ok now for the questions you asked.i do have a false bottom and i do have a waterfeature but the waterfall is selfcontained and not part of the false bottom.i generally dont keep my false bottom filled with water and basically drain it when it collects runoff water,so installing an underwater heater will not work.my room temps are currently around 75,so im looking to get my cage up 10 degrees,to 85.so what do you suggest??

Now that I know your talking 10 degrees I don't think that the water heater will work and if its not in regular use then it wouldn't work anyways. You may burn up the heater by accidently forgetting the water level.

Water is by nature a heat sink. All over the globe the oceans are maybe a few degrees different between winter and summer. I noticed this first when I actually kept fish the rooms temps would hardly flucuate because of the mass of water. Now if you had water in the bottom and heated it to 85' the temp in the tank would most likely go up because of this effect but glass is not the best insulator.

What species of animal are you keeping in the enclosure anyways?

Anything else you put below the tank will have the same effect as the water heater. I just mentioned cause it came to me, that and I have few laying around.

I have never used the human pad but have used UTH before and they are pretty simple in your case the animal can't contact the surface so there is no concern there.

Heating the water will be the best source of heat because of it thermal mass properties and it cover the whole bottom.

What are the cage temps them selves you said room temps before were 75. With the lights and a closed system like that I would bet the temps are close to 80.

I plan on setting up my Dart enclosures in a room with 75 ambient temps. With no additional heat save the lights.

Good luck
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"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

How thick is the glass that your thinking about sticking the UTH to?? Cause if you read the nice little wanrings on UTH's, it says not to use them when the other surface is in contact with water. It can cause stress fractures in the glass, thus causing all that work you put into it down the drain. Look into a air humidifier, one that can heat the air as well as humidify. Wire up a themostat to the humidifier and let'er rip. I looked into doing this with my new rainbow boa, haven't gotten it yet, still looking for a humidifier with a remote themostat, but I'm sure that their out there. Or, you could use a old school space heater, get some duct work going from the heater output running to that tank itself. Along the way, you can put a "pan" of sort with water in it, so the air isn't super dry when it finally reaches the enclosure. Just a thought, Air really won't allow the animal to themo-reg itself too well though, hmm, yeah, ok, never mind all that lol worth a shot to see if it gives you the results you were looking for.

yea thats the problem,without using heating lights,ceramics,or radiant heat pannels(all overhead) i see no other way of heating a cage that allows for a gradient.so anyway,i think i am going to rethink my lighting setup and maybe ill be able to make some extra space for a small ceramic heat emitter,but my cage is tall and im sure that will not be enought.id like to add an undertank heater but sice my landscaping is already done,it will have to go under the tank.my gall bottom is thing glass(window glass)but like i said its glued to a 1/4 piece of particle board.do you guys think a human heating pad can penitrate the 1/4 particle board,thin glass,and 1 inch of soil substrate??if it does that would be great becuase it can heat up the water a bit in my false bottom and create humidity and maybe dry the soil a bit(its been getting a little too saturated)

Well, here's an idea not sure what kind of budget your playing with. How handy are you with copper piping?? You could run a closed loop radiant heat system in the base of your enclosure. Ok, take a 5 gallon holding tank, seal the top, put a aquarium water heater or something along those lines. Ok, bear with me, much like a hot water heater can heat a house using copper pipe and a pump, you can run the piping ( they make some flexible copper piping ) any where you need to, then once your done running it, make a return line to the holding tank to allow the water to get hot again. Maybe, any one else with me on this one or am I over thinking it??

>>Maybe, any one else with me on this one or am I over thinking it??

Nope, I think it's a workable idea. A trip to the local fish/pet store and the hardware store would probably take care of all of it. You'd want to hook up a Tstat, obviously, and I'm trying to dedide how to do it. I think it might be best to run the water at a constant temperature and actually use the Tstat to control a pump. I think that is how home radiant systems work.

Also, a bit of Reflectix on top of the cage, assuming it can be hidden, will direct some of the heat from the light ballasts back into the cage. Of course that may increase the problem with burning the plants and won't help at night.

Not sure if you'd need to hook up a tstat to the pump, unless you were worried about burning out the pump. Houses work on that principle of a tstat turning on the pump, but usually the tstat's are easily 100 feet or more away from the pump/heating unit. With the heating holding tank being close to the enclosure, I would think it would make more sense to place the tstat on the inside of the enclosure and contect the heater to the tstat. As far as the size of the aquarium heater, I would use one rated for maybe a 20 gallon tank, maybe a bit bigger. Here's my reasoning on this, it's going to have to work harder to get the water up to a higher temp than desired if the heat has to difuse through god knows how many layers of dirt and what not, to increase the tanks over all tempurature. However, I just thought of something that might change all of that. How well do you guys think ther plants would hold up to a ten degree air temp change because it's going to require a higher temp to get through the ground, my worry is that it might kill some of the plant life with the addition of heat. Plants need to thermo-reg as well, yet they can't move to do so, they'll rely on the root systems to "cool" them if need be. I'm just not sure how happy the plants would be if they were getting heat from above and below. Any thoughts?? I love intellegent discussions on any level if you couldn't tell!!

I think you could go either way - hook the Tstat up to either the pump or the aquarium heater.

I'm not worried about heating up the pump, but was thinking more in terms of reducing the cooling effect of the water cycling even when the room temperature is sufficient. If the Tstat was set at 80*, for example, and the room temp was 80* during the summer, there is a chance that the pump running constantly would cool down the tank and cause the Tstat to cycle unecessarily. With my approach both the pump and the heater would run less during these times.

On the other hand, this could be used to ones advantage when the room was hotter than desired tank temperatures.

I think the system would use less energy with the Tstat hooked up to the pump. I also realize I'm prone to splitting hairs, and am likely doing so here

I have no idea about the plants. But I do know that many products on the market are designed to heat the soil that plants grow in rather than the plants themselves, so I'd guess it's okay.

I think you guys are making it a little two complicated. If you are going to use an aquarium heater in the first place why not use one in the tank and save the money on all the copper pipe.

Now with the radient idea an pipe you could expand this idea to other tanks therefore keeping the cost of muiltiple heaters down.

If I was to use the radient heater idea I would place the TStat on the heater and run the pump off a timer. Most aquarium heaters have a built in RStat so running the pump off a TStat with temp probe in the enclosure could cause potential problems. If you put the pump on a twelve phase timer then in will circulate the water many times a day in fact if you allowed the water to cycle less at night this would allow for a slight cooling effect.

If you ran the pump constant the temp within the system and the water in the enclosure would stay steady. But the heater would also tend to run more based on the heat transfer rate within the enclosure.

You could always insulate the lines to the enclosure they seal the wrap at nearly every hardware store.

One other possibility is with a remote water supply you could also run a mist system that would increase humidity along with a temp change.

My 2 Cents
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"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

I beleive a aquarium heater and a hydrostat would do the trick...
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