heating source

hey everyone, i've posted before and you guys have been a lot of help.

well, i'm well on my way to getting my very first cornsnake. one question.

for a heating source under the tank, my cousin suggested using a typical heating pad, rather than buying an undertank heater. i don't want to plan to use this unless i know it will get the tank hot enough. it does go up to a 'high' setting, but how can i be sure this will do the trick? the last thing i want is a frozen baby snake.

anyway, thanks for the advice!

Heating pad

I've never used a heating pad for my corns before, but I have used it for my eastern garter snakes. Works great. I set it on the lowest setting and placed about 1/3 of the tank on the pad. Kept the temp in the low 80's. You need to give it a lot of time for the temp to stabilize. I would not use this as a long term (years) heating solution, but for temporaty stuff (weeks or months) it's great. I eventually switched over the whole counter to heat tape.

yep, thosae under tank reptlie heating pads are the way to go. You can get them at any pet shop large or small. (i like the zoo-med brand ones the best.

Tai_pan, you keep eastern garters? They don't really seem like good pets, always musking. (i hate that smell) Anyways I was out catching some eastern garters today, got pretty good luck: 3 hatchlings and a skiny yearling.

yep

Both the garters were rescues. Kids in my brother in laws neigbor hood were hacking at them with hockey sticks. They're both healthy now, and I was debating if I should release them, but I've decided to wait until spring. If I wait, I can shorten their winter and hopefully bulk them up a little. I plan on breeding some of my corns in the spring so I'll need the tank then, but for now it's available for the garters.

My tank has a repti-therm heatpad it's radiated heat so if u touch it, it only feels warm thats wired to a thermostat at 85degrees F and my snakes have been alive for about 4months now so I think i'm okay. I'm guessing you will but just in case rememberthe thermostat.


Rach

Heating pads (designed for people) will get much too hot for your reptile on the "high" setting. Make sure you have something to measure the temp with....