Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had to move my snakes to the basement for space reasons. Unfortunatly i live in alberta, canada and my basement gets very cold some nights about 19 degrees C. All four snakes have heat pads. is this sufficiand or should i maybe slowly rotate there timers on the lights to be on at night when it is colder as there are no windows or natural light in these rooms

1.0 columbian red-tail ZEUS
1.0 snow corn BOREAS
1.0 charcoal corn APOLLO
1.0 Cali-kingsnake HELIOS

If you have them in glass tanks your going to have a really hard time keeping them warm enough..When I used glass I bought styrofoam insulation and wrapped all but the front and half the top with it to help keep in the heat....Id be most concerned for your boa, the others can take lower temps better(although not that low)..You might need to get a ceramic heat emitter and the Uth.But remember more heat equals less humidity..I would reconsider sending the boa down there, it might well end up with an RI...You could buy a safe space heater to heat the room with..

If you have plastic stackable enclosures then it might be easier to maintain the heat with UTHs, because stacking would let the lower ones utilize the heat from the cages above...

I just dont think snakes belong in cold basements. Especially tropical species like boas..
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Im thinking 19 C is like 32 F so I went to a converter to check and its like 66F thats not all that cold(yes not to good for snakes but not freezing like I thought)....As you can see I flunked the metric system in school...So maybe it wont be soo hard to keep them warm..Still you might try the styrofoam around the tank if thats what your using..
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Thanks for the help what do u think about me slowly changing there lighting pattern so lights go on at night when its colder
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Not sure you want to change the light cycle on them, might disrupt their "normal" behavior. I would recommend something else besides the foam. If your using glass, which it sounds like you are, I put the standard decorative background around at least the back side of the tank, then I place this awesome material on the back of that. It's called reflexit, kinda like those car sunscreen thingys. Depending on your needs, in your case, shiny side torwards the heat source to keep heat in. I use it on one of my enclosures that's near a window and houses a BRB that has a big issue with temps higher than 80ish so I use that as relector to keep the heat off. I noted a 5 degree decrease in tempurature using the Reflexit, which keeps my proportional t-stat from working overtime and at the same time, keep the majority of the heat coming from the UTH, not the sun heating up the backside of the enclosure. If I were you, I'd cover three sides of the enclosures with the stuff, experiment with it. Hope that my rambling helps.