• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Confused about heating

H

Hoosierneals

New member
Hi- brand new 1st snake arrived today! He's a cute little fluorescent amel and seems to have settled in ok. We confess to being confused about the heat issue. There are many different recommendations listed on many different places!
Right now he's in a small reptile habitat (plastic, secure latching, ventilated at the top) about 5gal. with a reptile type heating pad under one end. There's a couple of inches of aspen in the bottom.
Here in Indy it's been warm and our indoor air temp has been about 80. I checked with a temperature probe and found that at the surface of the aspen the warm side is 84-85, and on the cool side 80. Down at the bottom of the shavings is a very warm 104 on the warm side and still about 80 on the cool side.
After taking quite a bit of time to explore his new home he settled down for the afternoon buried down at the bottom of the cage in the corner on the cool side and there he still is. Our worry- is the temp situation ok? Do we need to worry about how hot it is on the warm side down at the bottom or is he smart enough not to hang out there? He has something to hide in on both sides so he's not burying himself as the only option to be covered up.
Thanks for your help-Sara :shrugs:
 
104 at the bottom of the hot side is pretty hot. You could maybe try removing the heat pad and placing a spacer between it and the enclosure... maybe stick it to a small piece of glass and put THAT under the tank.
 
First things first…

104 is a tad toasty and definitely needs to be lowered. Is the UTH regulated by a thermostat or rheostat?

Regards,
Steve
 
It's a ZooMed Repti Therm UTH- nothing to adjust. I'm going to set up a spacer right now and see what that does. Maybe the fact that this housing is plastic is the problem. It's a heat pad we've had for several years from back when we had hermit crabs. If spacing or insulating doesn't work maybe there's something wrong with it internally that causes it to get too warm.
What do you typically have surface/bottom on the warm side temp-wise?
Thanks for the quick feedback btw!
Sara
 
That temp is normal, believe it or not. Most people here hook their pads up to a thermostat or rheostat to control the temp output. My suggestion is a cheap way to go, but not necessarily the best.
 
I just posted this to someone else but here is a link to make your own rheostat. This should help control the amount of heat. You can turn off the heat if the temps are in the low 80's.
 
I would look into a Big Apple Herp BAH-1000 thermostat.

Running an unregulated UTH is only asking for trouble. I'm surprised that it was fine for a hermit crab since they prefer a heat gradient from the high 70's on the cool side to the low 80's on the warm side. However, with that said, I'm certainly not an expert on hermit crab care.

Your snake will burrow to the glass and 104 is way to warm for it.

I run my UTH at 88 degrees on the glass.

Regards,
Steve
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top