Heat from above ?

It seems with all the things you have to worry about,using an UTH,,trying to reach your warm and cool temps might be easier/safer done with a small heat bulb ?.
This works in my bearded dragon tanks,so....

Using a heat mat is easy providing you have a thermostat which is in my opinion essential. The reason that most prefer heat mats is they provide belly heat which aids digestion better than using a light bulb. Unlike some snakes corns don't need an high ambient air temperature only ground heat. Using a bulb brings in added problems of how to heat at night time. If you didn't want to use two bulbs you would have to use a red bulb all the time which in my opinion does not look that great. In my experience light bulbs also get too hot and unlike heat mats you need an expensive dimming thermostat to control them. If you were using anything other than a heat mat I would suggest ceramic bulbs which cuts out light problems but again it requires a more expensive pulse proportional thermostat for accurate heat control.

Heat mats are cheapest and easier as well as more reliable. They provide the best heating method for corns and if you use a thermostat and digital thermometer there is very little which can go wrong. They also can look better as you ever see them. It can also be said that achieving the hot and cool side is a lot easier.

I'd also add that they dry the air less. You want a whole shed on snakes, not the sloughing in pieces that you typically get with lizards.

I actually started by using a heat lamp & it became a pain; I had a harder time achieving the difference in temp across the tank & my Maizie seemed to not be as active. I then switched to a UTH (a 5-10 gal size one from Zoo Med for my 10 gal tank), which I connected to a rheostat (the same one that you can search for here on this site!) to maintain the amount of current allowed to the UTH to keep its heat output steady, and I put a thermostat inside the tank, right over the spot where the UTH is. I also attached the UTH to a ceramic (from Home Depot for 82 cents) with electrical tape, so there is a bit of space between the UTH and the actual tank, and that allows for the heat to disperse a bit more, as well as the snake's belly to not sit directly upon the UTH. I also put little rubber feet on the ceramic tile's corners so that it sits propped up a bit, and the tank is pretty much sitting on the tile -- with the tank's corners propped up a bit, too, to accomodate for the difference (I used flat glass candle holder-plates to hold the tank up & over the tile...). I definitely like this set-up better, and I've seen great improvement in Maizie's activity level, and it's just easier to maintain.

Cegninedorf said:

I also attached the UTH to a ceramic (from Home Depot for 82 cents) with electrical tape, so there is a bit of space between the UTH

Click to expand...

tile...to a ceramic tile...

sorry about that

Wow,thats seems like a lot going on for just a 10 gal.tank,no ??.I am setting up a 30 gal.that I had for a bearded dragon.Its a bit on the large side,considering I will probably end up with a baby corn.
I just know from past experience,that a larger tank is much easier to maintain a good temperature range.
OK,,so if the heat needs to be at the under side of the snake, which makes perfect reptile seance,,than why not use a good size piece of slate ??.
I know,,someone mentioned before about slate not being a good idea,because of sharp edges,but thats easily taken care of.Slate is not hard to work with.
Bingo,bango,,you have a nice warm flat surface.The slate will warm up nicely and hold the heat.Now at night,,just like in the wild,the overall temp.will drop off,but not lower than 70 to 72.Those temps wouldn't be OK for sleeping ?,I know I sleep MUCH better when it cools off in the night. :grin01:
I don't know,,I'm just tossing out some ideas,or alternatives.I am going to pick the brains of my local snake "guru",,just to see what works for him.He has A LOT of snakes,and breeds almost all of them,so what ever hes doing works,too.
You guys are GREAT on this board.All the info I need,and then some. :grin01:
I started putting the tank together tonight.I have a medium cave hide on the cool side,wood and a water dish in the center.I still need to get a hide for the warm end,and maybe another piece of wood.I'm using coconut bark substrate,,after returning the fir bark.I went about 2" deep,that should be good.I wish I could post a pic.,but I'm not that computer handy. :shrugs:

No, not really...it's actually quite simple, not messy looking at all, and easy as cake. If I had a camera to post a photo right now, you'd see...the tank is propped up, and underneath it on one side is a tile with the UTH under it. I don't have a tile inside the tank. And my temps stay great, thanks to the UTH being connected to a rheostat...I have 74 on one side, 83 on my warm side. I use aspen bedding (I don't know about coconut bark at all...but I've only ever used & heard about aspen...) now, but for the first month I kept my lil'guy on paper towels. To give him the feel of burrowing, I crumpled up some paper towels & laid them out over the tank floor so he wouldn't feel completely out in the open.

My 10 gal tank only has a hide & a water bowl on the cool side, a big plant in the middle and then aspen substrate, and Maizie is super-content. He burrows on the warm side & he's quite social. And now that I just finished a roll of toilet paper, I'm going to put the roll into his tank on the warm side, too...my other guy, Fritz, loves his paper towel roll. (And I follow pretty much the same set-up for Fritz in his 35 qt Sterilite and his soon-to-be 20 gal long tank in my classroom...)

Obviously, I'm not overly concerned about the "natural" look with my paper towel rolls.

Good luck!

My corns LOVE the paper towel rolls. The rolls get used more than the hides I purchased. Makes you a little miffed....kind of like at Christmas when your kid plays with the box more than the toy. :grin01:

Cegninedorf,,I think I can picture your set now.The heat from the UTH has to heat through the tile before it can get to the tank bottom,correct ??.Your using the tile as a kind of "buffer" to help controll the amount of heat that gets to the tank,am I right ?.Why would you have to do it like that if you use a thermostat ?.I don't understand.
I got a chance to check out some corns at a local Petsmart today.I must say, they looked GREAT.I couldn't see a single problem.The manager took them out for me to look at.They had a total of 4 differant colors.Very cool looking little guys.I WANTED TO BUY ALL OF THEM :grin01:
But,,not yet,,still don't have everything I need.I did try a small experiment with an over head light.With a 25 watt,on a 30 gal. tank, I had a surface temp of 79.1.I might see what a 40 watt will achieve.

I can't speak for anyone else, but, IMO, tiles can be used for two purposes. 1) They can "act as a buffer" and reduce the amount of heat reaching the viv. 2) They can distribute the heat. A tile is probably much more effective at distributing the heat out over it's entire surface, where a UTH stuck right to the bottom of the viv is more like to create hot spots where its heating elements touch the glass. A tile is better at spreading the heat out more evenly over its entire surface.

So,,you adhere the UTH to the tile,then attach the tile to the botton of your tank ?.

ok newbie here with a question. where do you put the thermomiter ? I know you are supposed to measuring how hot the substrate is correct? So do you berry the probe of the thermomiter in the substrate, or lay it on top of the substrate?

Place the probe on the substrate under the hide. This is most likely where your snake will be. You can bury it slightly under the substrate if yours tends to burrow.

thanx a bunch

Droptines said:

So,,you adhere the UTH to the tile,then attach the tile to the botton of your tank ?.

Click to expand...

Sorry...with school back in session, it's a bit hectic once again.

Yes, I adhere the UTH to a tile -- but, I adhered it with electrical tape, so, no, I didn't remove the sticky backing. The UTH gets to be 84 degrees at most (I measure the temp with the thermostat & I control the heat output via a rheostat...), so the paper won't be burning anytime soon. The tile does serve 2 purposes for my tanks, as Zwyatt already pointed out: to serve as a buffer between the UTH and the tank & to distribute the heat. I prefer my snakes uncooked.

And, right over where I can feel the most heat coming from the UTH, I place the thermostat's probe (which measures the "out" temp) directly against the bottom of the tank. (Do *not* tape it down...tape is a no-no!) I just lay it there & then when I spot clean, or check temps, I make sure that it's in place still...easy enough.

See? It's not so bad. (That's easy enough for me to say now, now that I've got my set-up finally beautifully underway! ) Good luck!

Sounds good,thanks for the input.

These are my felling on the subject. In the wild the only time corn snakes get heat from the ground is when they are out hunting on the ground. Corn snakes being primarily arboreal spend most of their time in trees. The places where they spend their time digesting are hollows in trees and stumps and under tree bark. Although trees can be warm during the day they lose their heat during the night. In the wild corn snakes get a large portion of their heating from the air. Even though heat lamps aren't essential to a snakes life they can provide a photo period for snake housed in a windowless. And when properly combined with a UTH can create more natural heat. If you want the best of both worlds you should have in your snakes tank, hides, a large water bowl and a large flat stone. just position the heat lamp over the stone. Now you snake has a basking spot ambient heat, ground heat and at night after you have turn off the light the stone will remain warm and radiate heat throughout the tank.

Raiden,,very good point.I thought this way too,but most think the heat has to come from below.So I mentioned the flat rock too,,Nope,not the way to do it.Has to be a heat pad under the tank.I was thinking a big flat piece of natural slate,under a heat source.The response I got was "no,the snake could get hurt on a sharp edge",,, :shrugs:

Um, cornsnakes are not arboreal and are not listed as such. They are a terrestrial snake. I don't know where you got the idea that they are arboreal. Sure, they climb now and then, but they don't spend most of their time in trees eating birds. Gree tree pythons, tree boas and emerald tree boas are arboreal although some species of tree boa spend a large amount of time on the ground. There is nothing wrong with using overhead heat, heat tape on the sides, or just heat your room to 82 if you want. The main drawback is that heatlamps really dry the air which can often lead to crap sheds. If you want to use a heat lamp for your "arboreal" corn...go for it. The snake will survive and digest just fine, but don't give out information that is inaccurate in order to prove out what you want to do. Look in any herping book and you won't find a cornsnake listed as arboreal.

Cornsnakes are also nocturnal, so they don't require a photo period at all.