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.

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