Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,
I am new to this forum and this is my first posting. I like all the discussions that people have and find many of them very helpful. I recently found a Dumeril which I want to buy, but before I get the guy (it's a male), I started setting up a terrarium for him. I bought a glass terrarium (dimensions are about 80cm x 35 cm x 40cm high). I bought a ReSun under tank heater which takes up about 50 of the bottom of the tank. I added a digital thermometer/hygrometer that can read temps at both ends of the tank. Unfortunately, the temperature within the tank does not rise to the levels that I would like. Even though the room is heated to 23 (celcius), the cold part of the tank is usually around 24 degrees and the warm part is around 27 degrees; and that's on the tank bottom that touches the under tank heater. If I place my thermometer probe about half way up within the tank over the heater the temps are even lower.

I would like to increase the temps by about 3 degrees overall. Unfortunately the tank has a glass top which has a 2 inch width mesh screen in the middle that runs along the length of the top.

I have two questions; Is it really important to have high ambient temperatures when I have a tank heater that emits infra red radiation that heats the animals from the inside (as they claim)? If yes, does anyone have any recommendations on how to bring up the temperatures? I thought of placing a ceramic lamp on the inside top part of the tank but I would rather leave that as a last resort due to safety issues.

Thank you and sorry for the long posting.

zorpasg, I guess I can't speak for everyone that uses this forum, but I at least live in the American midwest, and I really only ever see metric measurements when I am studying a foreign language or something along those lines.

So I did some research on the measurements you listed. Two websites that I like a lot for conversions are:

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/calculator.php

http://convert.french-property.co.uk/#mass

The first one is a fish forum website, but is has a really cool volume calculator, where you can enter the dimensions of an aquarium (or cage) and find out its volume. I do this because, for all of my interests in science, I am TERRIBLE when it comes to math!!!

Anyhow, You said your room temperature is 23°C which is 73.4°F,
the cool end of the cage is 24°C which is 75.2°F,
the warm end of the cage is 27°C which is 80.6°F,
and that you want to raise these temperatures by about 3°C, which would give you 27°C on the cool end, which again is 80.6°F,
and this would raise the warm end to 30°C which is 86.0°F

You listed your cage dimensions as: about 80cm x 35 cm x 40cm high.
The fish website's calculator says that gives you a volume of 112L, which is equivalent to 29.473 gallons. This should be adequate for a neonate or young juvenile Dumeril's Boa... but not for an adult.

I don't really understand what you are describing when you said "the tank has a glass top which has a 2 inch width mesh screen in the middle that runs along the length of the top." I've never seen anything like that anywhere, that I can think of, so I don't really have a good concept of what your cage is. You definitely do not want to use a ceramic heat emitter if you cannot place it outside of the cage without it directly emitting heat into a pane of glass, as that will eventually cause the glass to crack. You also should not use a ceramic heat emitter inside the cage at all.

It sounds as if the temperatures you have in mind are good if you can find a way to maintain them. Unless I misread your post, you said you have a digital thermometer/hygrometer (very good!) but no thermostat. It would be a very good idea for you to purchase a good thermostat. Low-end thermostats run about $40 here, while the higher-end (more reliable) Ranco and Helix brand thermostats run about $50 to $100 respectively. I don't know well enough where you are to even have an idea what currency you would need to convert to. Sorry.

Another useful tool you should consider purchasing is an infrared temperature sensor. These are widely sold for gourmet chefs and racecar mechanics, and measure the temperature of a surface. This is particularly useful because you want to be able to ensure that no surface in the cage is hot enough to burn your snake while you are trying to raise the ambient air temperatures. The website I know of where I purchased my "temp gun," is: http://www.tempgun.com/main.html - I have and love the PE2 model.

Unfortunately, I am not an expert on Dumeril's Boas; I have one who is quite healthy and happy, and I have had her since June of 2005, so I have a little experience with this species. I have a lot more general snake keeping knowledge, as I grew up keeping several different species of colubrids, along with a long-term-captive Ball Python, and a random scattering of small boa species. I've actually only lived four years of my life collectively without keeping any reptiles.

That being said, I welcome any of the true experts that lurk on this forum to chime in and give you better advice. Good luck to you!!

~Rebecca

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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)

Rebecca,
first let me thank you for your reply and the useful information you provided. And as you may have well realized, I live in Europe and not the States (although I lived for 5 years in the US during my studies).

You mention that it is not a good idea to have a ceramic bulb within the tank. What if I enclose the bulb in a metalic guard of some sort, something like the one they have for sale on this site: http://www.livefoods.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=521 Wouldn't this protect my boa and also heat the tank as needed?

By the way, you are right in pointing out that I forgot to mention the size of the Dumeril I am interested in. He is currently slightly over a meter long (that's almost 3.5 feet). And yes I know that I will need to change the tank when he grows enough.

The unfortunate fact where I live (Cyprus) is that reptile keepers are not that abundant as elsewhere and a lot of items are hard to find. One of those items are reptile cages. And ordering one over the net from abroad is restrictive due to the very high shipping costs. Just to give you an idea, I e-mailed Cages By Design and asked the shipping costs for a $250 worth cage, and they quoted $750...now that's outrageous. So we have to live with what we have I know I can build one, but there's not enough time right now.

I would think that the metallic shield for the ceramic heat emitter is still not anything you want to use with a snake; they love to explore stuff, and usually not what you want them to explore!

As for good caging, while a lot of people who keep multiple reptiles gripe about using fish tanks - and they are not the best cages out there - they do work pretty well. You can usually find used fish tanks for ridiculously cheap (at least around here) in your local classified ads. I believe the suggested footprint for an adult Dumeril's Boa cage is 4' X 2' which works out to about 121.92cm X 60.96cm, and figuring for a 2' height, gives a volume of 453L or about 119 gallons... in case you get a chance to look around for some used aquaria.

For my own little collection, I currently have a mixture of glass "Critter Cages" with sliding, lockable mesh lids, and old used aquaria with home-made mesh tops. They work just fine, though humidity can be an issue just because my house gets very dry in the winter, and the mesh tops allow a lot of humidity to escape the cages. To counter that, I am using some thin plastic/acrylic sheets my husband and I found at a local home improvement store, with cut-outs to allow for my heat lamps (which I am slowly working away from as well). They aren't perfect, but they aren't bad either. If you should eventually get a used fish tank, just make sure you thoroughly clean & disinfect it before putting your snake in it. Just make sure that everything is safe and maintains the desired environment.

Hope that helps

~Rebecca
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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)

Honestly...I would not recommend any sort of CHE for a dumerils, and a guarded light in a cage that is 15 inches tall is just asking for trouble. If you can keep it in the low 80s on the warm side with the heat pad, you should be fine! Avoid creating a overheated environment for him! Always use two different thermometers when measuring temperature. I always use digital, and also have a proexotics temp gun, which is the best! Start shopping around for a new tank, a 30 gallon that is 14 inches wide is really quite cramped for a snake that is almost 4 feet long! I hear you on shipping, try the newspaper or online classifieds for your area. You may have to drive a bit, but you may be surprised some of the bargains you can find!
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Thanks,
Amy
www.myboids.4t.com
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1.14 Normal ball pythons
1.0 Pastel ball pythons
0.0.1 Sinaloan Milk Snake
0.0.1 Plains Garter
0.1 Normal Kenyan Sand Boa
2.0 Anery Kenyan Sand Boa
1.0 Mid-Baja Rosy Boa
0.1 Leucistic Texas Rat
1.2 Dumeril's Boa
My list is too long, so I'll stop here!

I took a picture of the top of my tank so that you can see why I cannot simply add a reflector with a heat lamp on top. As you can see the top is made up of two pieces of glass, separated in the middle by a 2.5" strip of wire mesh guard.

I agree with you Amy that adding the bulb guard on the inside will allow the bulb guard so hang too low (since the tank height is not much). But what other options do I have? And yes I did a search for other bigger tanks without any luck.

hi Rebecca, I saw where you said you are in a process of moving away from using heat lamps, and I was wondering what you prefer to use. I started my snake collection about three years ago, and now I have 10 snakes (see my signature below). At the time, I was using a mixture of heat lamps, and heat pads, then I went to mostly using heat pads for about a year. Now I've changed to only using heat lamps (most have a built in dimmer knob) because of numerous problems with the heat pads. These problems consisted of: 1) they provided a warm spot to lay on, but did not help with ambiant temps. 2) after about 5 months they fall off (some brands are better than others) and 3) the hot spot got too hot for some of them, and it is too expensive to buy a thermostat for every cage. Are you now using something better than both of those options?
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-David

1.0 ball python (Pandora - don't ask)
1.0 argentine boa (Prometheus)
0.1 hogg island boa (Andromeda)
0.0.1 brazilian rainbow boa (Inara)
1.0 kenyan sand boa (Diablo)
1.0 nornal corn snake(Cypress)
0.1 amery. corn snake (Morgan LaFay)
0.0.1 banded cali. kingsnake (Cain)
1.0 tangerine honduran milksnake (Narcissus)
0.0.1 snow corn snake (Valkyrie)
0.0.1 sandfish skink (Slick)
1.0 dog (Luke)

I have no idea if this would help or not, but the following URL is for "Craig's List," a website that does great local classifieds for most places over here. They have international listings... but I can't tell if they would be helpful or not. They don't have Cyprus listed, but they do have Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon among others.

http://athens.craigslist.org/

Good luck!

~Rebecca
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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)