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Heating problems...

E

Em Wright

The Ice Queen
Well our new snake arrived today, we set up the cage today as well and were noticing some issues with the UTH and Rheostat that we bought. We're not sure which is the culprit... at first we thought it was the UTH that we got in a kit (we've been somewhat short fundage wise), but maybe it's the Rheostat. :awcrap:

The temperature on the warm side of the tank has gone from about 70 to 79 degress all day. It's almost midnight and the tank is about 76 degress F. Is there anything you guys can recommend to solving this problem. Our snake has been staying mostly on the warm side and we have a regular lamp sitting beside her tank in an attempt to keep it warm.

Thanks in advanced.
 
If you got a kit I'm guessing you got one of the stick on dial type thermometers or stuck on tape thermometers..so right there is your culprit..the stick on thermometers are horrible at giving the correct temp. I can bet my snake collection that the uth is probably much much hotter..You need to get a thermometer with a probe which can be found at any wal-mart or even petsmart now carrys them. Put the thermometer probe over the glass where the uth is and you will get your correct reading.

Also as I side note..If it's the Zoo Med rheostat your using I wouldn't count on it helping very much. There have been multiple cases I have heard on here on how that rheostat just doesn't seem to keep the temps where their supposed to be..You'd be much better off making your own from some simple supplies you can buy at wal-mart (just do a search on the forum for how to make it) or you could return it and with the money buy a thermostat from online..some sites have GREAT prices for a thermostat.."Reptilesupply.com" has a Zoomed500R thermostat that I will happily vouch for...It works great and can control 2 heat mats at once..they have it priced for 21.00 right now which is a steal :0) Best luck to ya :0)
 
Maize411 said:
You'd be much better off making your own from some simple supplies you can buy at wal-mart
Click to expand...

You can actually just buy a "lamp dimmer" at walmart in the hardware section, no need to make one. The lamp dimmer is white and costs something like $7.92. I use it on both of my UTH's and it works quite well. Of course the viv temp will vary with the surrounding air temp, but if your viv is in a climate controlled area to begin with this should be fine.

I had a ZooMed rheostat before the lamp dimmer and it was crap. The lowest temp I could keep the UTH at with that rheostat was ~95 (WAY too high).

As for the thermometer: look at the pet store in the aquarium section and you can find a digital probe thermometer by Coralife for ~$8-10. The EXACT same thermometer is marketed under the Trex (or some other "reptile supply" name) in the herp section for $15-20. Alternately you can get an indoor/outdoor probe thermometer in the "outdoor" or lighting section of Target or Walmart for ~$8-10. The one at Target is made by Oregon Scientific.
 
I'm using a thermometer with a probe. I'd read here a lot that the dials and stick on ones weren't very helpful so I made sure to get a one with a probe.

We're actually debating taking the kit back as the only things we planned on using from it are the UTH and feeding tongs (oh and the extremely small water dish). We had gone to PetSmart (is it just me or are they really expensive on some things?) to get the supplies and then yesterday stumbled across a local petstore that carried the ZooMed UTH for $5 cheaper than PetSmart. They also had feeding tongs for $2, so we're debating taking the kit back and getting the other things we need for the cheaper prices.

We decided to start messing with it and moved the probe to a different location on the pad and the temp ran up to 86 degrees within a couple minutes. We're thinking we just had the probe in a location where the pad wasn't very hot. It has stayed consistantly between 86 and 87 degrees since. The pad itself is a bit small, so we moved her hide to one of the warm spots and she seemed very happy with that.

Thanks for the info guys! I'll have to see about replacing that Rheostat with a better one, I wasn't overly impressed with it, but that's what we could find in our area at the time. :/

Thanks again!
 
Sorry for the double post... I posted just after Ceridwen.

I wish I'd know that before I got the reptile brand. It was $15 for the thermometer! Now that my PC seems okay with loading CS.com I'll be coming around more and hopefully will find out some other ways of making things cheaper.

Thanks for the advice Ceridwen! I'll keep that all in mind for future reference (I can't stop at one snake, I got Mali and I want another one already!) :p
 
Ice44 said:
I wish I'd know that before I got the reptile brand. It was $15 for the thermometer!
Click to expand...

The only reason I knew was because I'd had the Coralife one when I had my aquarium set up and so when I saw the one on the reptile aisle and was about to buy it I was like "You know what, I swear I payed less for this before, let me check the fish section".

BTW: No need for specialized reptile feeding tongs either. I use regular old kitchen tongs (2 pack for $2) from Walmart for feeding my snakes. I use them only for that purpose and keep them with the snake feeding bins.

Not sure from your post but it sounds like you might only have one hide, in which case you should add another (preferably identical to the first) for the other side of the viv. My snakes think toilet paper rolls are the best hide ever. It's not especially decorative though it is quite cheap (and you can move them to poster tube when they get bigger). I got heavy ceramic crocks from the small pet section of Petsmart for water bowls, which i like MUCH better than the water bowls in the reptile section. I think they were $2-3 each.
 
Oh yeah, I've got two hides.

Hmmm I'll have to check out the small pet waterbowls because I really didn't care for the reptile ones or the price.

If you think of anything else that might be cost effective drop me a PM sometime. :)
 
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