• 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.

New Here, Question About Lighting

G

Gary2sons

New member
We are trying to decide whether to cool our three cornsnakes for the Winter or just keep feeding until Spring. Would like to see some growth but heating our 6x6 room where the snakes are kept is an added expense. We have a space heater that comes on and also a 150watt ceiling lamp that I have been leaving on day and night. Wanted to know if that should be turned off at night? Also if the snakes are not of breeding age yet does it really hurt anything?

Have been following this forum for several weeks! Really enjoy going back over all the older posts to learn about corn snakes. :)
 
If they're not breeding size yet, I'd keep their viv's at 85ish on the warm side and keep feeding as normal.
 
I would give them a proper photo period of 12-14 hours of dark every night. It can be bad to always have a light on them.
 
Gary2sons said:
We are trying to decide whether to cool our three cornsnakes for the Winter or just keep feeding until Spring. Would like to see some growth but heating our 6x6 room where the snakes are kept is an added expense. We have a space heater that comes on and also a 150watt ceiling lamp that I have been leaving on day and night. Wanted to know if that should be turned off at night? Also if the snakes are not of breeding age yet does it really hurt anything?

Have been following this forum for several weeks! Really enjoy going back over all the older posts to learn about corn snakes. :)
Click to expand...

I agree with Shogun and would give them a more natural photoperiod instead of leaving the light on all of the time.

It may be cheaper to just keep the 6x6 room at normal house temperature, say 72F, and just heat the snake tank to the proper temperature for the snake, say 80- 84ish on the warm side and 72 - 75 ish on the cool side.

Search the threads for under tank heaters (UTH) and threads like UTH vs. light heat. Most folks seem to prefer the UTH plugged into a thermostat and some use light.

I'm using light to heat the tank but I'm using a Repti glo moonlight lamp. the snake can not see that light so it doesn't bother it at night. I got a T rex fixture with a dimmer to screw the bulb into so I can control the intensity (heat) of the light. I use a digital thermometer with the probe on top of the substrate right under the light to set the dimmer for the correct temperature.

The nice thing about the moonlight bulb is that I can keep the snake room dark at night and still go in an watch the snake when she is most active in the tank with out disturbing her. I'm thinking about putting moonlight bulbs in the ceiling fixture in there so I can see too.

I just got a repti therm 500R thermostat that I'm going to use with the light just to be safe although the dimmer on the T rex light fixture did a good job.

Hope that helps
 
If you dont' plan on breeding them, there is really no reason to brumate them. I do agree that you need to turn off the light at night.

I have all my snakes in an approximatley 8 x 8' room. Each tank has a UTH which provides an appropriately heated side. I have an oil filled space heater in the room which keeps the temps from dropping below 70'. It's been working just fine so far.
 
Thanks everyone for the comments! I knew it would be best to have a photo period but was just curious if it mattered for a short time. Also it seems like pet shops sometimes keep the lights on at night. But then again I have seen a few improper things occur at pet shops!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top