i have a 55 gallon terrarium that i set up in fall with 2 forest(i think) geckos, a rainbow skink, and about 6 different tropical plants.
it was doing nicely until winter time came. the 2 geckos and rainbow skink in it were feeling cold all the time so i resorted to turning the house heat upto between 70 and 75. but due to how expensive that is, i stopped doing that before too long because i diden't exactly want a huge heating bill. i resorted to putting a small heat lamp on one end of the tank on the screen top.
this seemed to keep the geckos alive, they always hung out on the glass near the lamp, the skink diden't seem to like it too much and usually was at the other end of the tank where the sun shone threw the window on him during the days. this unfortunatly had a drawback, the lowlight palms that were in the corner of the tank near the heat lamp have pretty much died from the hot light shining on them.
i recently moved the tank to a different spot in the room because i'm rearranging the room in preperation of building a new, very large terrarium. after moving it, the skink died. i think because the sun was never thier anymore and he hung out at the opposite end of the tank from the heatlamp. since i diden't want to kill any more plants, i stuck a small mini heater on the screen with one end of it shielded from blowing into the tank. it seemed nicer and the geckos loved it even more. i found them in more places then the corner and a small thermometer in the tank said the temp was between 80F and 90F depending on how much air was blowing into the tank. but then one of the geckos suddenly died and a different plant has died as well.
now, i'm planning on building a huge terrarium that will have 1 foot of dirt in it for plants, a river, and a pond, and 3 feet of space over the dirt for the plants to grow nice and big in (the overall dimensions are 6'8" x 2'8" x about 6').
i was planning on tossing a temperature controlled miniheater in the hood of the terrarium to keep the tank around 85F all day long but with heatlamps killing the plants and the mini heater killing both plants and a gecko i don't really know what to use. i don't think heat rocks would be good due to the moister and humidity.
