How bad did you break it? When I was young and poorer I routinely collected aquariums and simply put clear shipping tape of cracks. It's not really sterilizable, but it'll get you through.

I strongly recommend getting at least a 20 gal long tank for a replacement, in order to have a proper thermogradient. A new tank costs a lot less than a single visit to the veternarian, so it's easy to justify having the proper tank for an animal in order to AVOID the costs of the veternarian. It just is not possible to have a proper thermogradient in 10 gal tank.

Here's something I wrote up a while ago about using UTHs.


Hognoses are exclusively diurnal. This means they are most used to basking in the sun in the early morning. I think it is very important to mimic the greatest natural variable, the sun. Therefore, the primary heat source for a captive hognoses should be a fixture that produces both light and heat (a light bulb basically).

Why not use under tank heaters?

A large portion of the popular captive herps are nocturnal at least seasonally. Under tank heaters are great for these animals that intuitively will rest on rocks or other structures that have absorbed heat during the day and are getting off the heat at night. For these animals, deriving heat from below them is perfectly natural. For hognoses however, never being nocturnal means that they always get their heat from above. My theory for the sources of heat for hognoses is supported by the monumental work by Dwight Platt in 1969 on the natural history of Western and Eastern hognoses. He clearly states that hognoses burrow DOWN to escape high heat in the late summer months and enter a quasi-estivation state. To me, it is clear that hognoses in captivity should be allowed to go UP to get warm, and go DOWN to get cool. The ability for a captive herp to thermoregulate their own body temperature cannot be emphasized enough. They should be able to get as warm as they like, and get as cool as they like.

This discrepancy isn't necessarily going to kill a hognoses, but in the effort to optimize captive conditions for health and behavior, this should be something to consider and is one of the easiest things to change. Under tank heaters will certainly suffice for some hognoses, but I positively don't think they are ideal for hognoses. They certainly have their place as a supplementary heat source, especially for nighttime heat.

Despite the popular consensus, thermal preference measurements in wild snakes shows that hognoses have a preferred body temperature in the low tended 90s.
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Virginia Herping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VaHS
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"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine

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