• 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.

???'s: About to get my first snake

What type of heating?

  • Undertank Heater

    Votes: 18 94.7%

  • Clamp Lamp w/ Incandescent Bulb

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Total voters
    19
  • Poll closed .
horned_frog_guy

horned_frog_guy

New member
I'm about to take the plunge and purchase my first snake, a caramel corn hatchling from South Mountain Reptiles, but I still have a few question for you guys.

First let me tell you what I have:
-10gal glass aquarium
-screen hood
-aspen bedding
-water dish
-two hides

Help me decide between a clamp lamp or an undertank heater! Which is better and why? I'm afraid to get an UTH because I'm worried that it could burn the snake if it burrows into the aspen. I also dont like the fact that an UTH cant be removed when cleaning. But, I also dont want to worry about the clamp lamp catching on fire.

Also, what is the best temperature for these guys. What is ideal for the warm side? cool side? And, what about nighttime temps?

Please help.
 
There's no contest really, UTH is pretty standard. Corns are nocturnal, so they don't need extra light, and lamps tend to dry them out real bad. Plus, depending on who you ask, belly heat is better for digestion. Some say it is, some say it's not, but I'm not going to get into that because I have no real opinions either way.

As far as removing the UTH to clean. The easiest solution to that is not to attach it in the first place. You can either mount it on a ceramic tile and put that under the tank (build a cheap rheostat to control temps so it doesn't burn the snake, or else vary the height of the viv above the UTH). I do the tile thing and elevate the viv to adjust the temps (it rarely needs readjusted, so it works fine for me at least). Another thing I've read is to put tin foil on the sticky side of the UTH and just tape it to the bottom of the viv so it can be removed.

The benefits of mounting the UTH in such a way that you can remove it are that you can move it to clean like you mentioned, you can switch it to a new viv if you transfer the snake to a new one, and you can remove it if it should happen to malfunction (which probably won't happen, but if you have one for long enough, it's bound to die at some point).

If you get a good, digital probe thermometer, you can put the probe at the bottom of the aspen on the warm side to accurately measure temps. As far as the temps are concerned, during the day they should be around the mid 80's on the warm side and the low to mid 70's on the cool side. Too much off either end of that scale can be dangerous, but temps will drop at night regardless of what you do, so as long as they don't get too cool, it'll be fine.
 
Hey...thanks for your thorough answer. Thats a great idea about the tile, I think I will do that. What kind of tile should I get?
 
Tile

My b/f just walked into a local flooring store and asked for a piece of sample tile. He even told them what it was for, they often have extra pieces of tile that aren't really popular or odds and ends they don't mind sharing.
 
yep, I just got regular floor tile. It's cheap (something like $.40 at Home Depot), durable, and it looks nice. The only bad thing I can say about it is that the tile radiates heat as well, so it tends to make the surrounding area hotter than just with the UTH alone. It's nothing major, and easily corrected for, but it's something that I didn't really anticipate when I did it.
 
Someone correct me if there is a flaw or in my logic here.
I went with light heating because the tank I'm using right now was already set up with it. I have a converted Aquarium that used to house tropical fish, It has lights in the lid with a piece of glass to protect the bulbs (and any snake who would want to touch them). It has one twenty five watt bulb at each end and would keep the water at a nice 85 degrees. Now because I need a cool side I took out one bulb so only the one side has direct light, The temperature stays at about 83 on the warm side and 74 on the cool side. The little guy I keep in there just loves climbing around on his branches so I figure for this light heating is nicer because he can be at up higher in the tank haning out in the branches and still be getting the heat where as in an under tank heater unit the heat at the top would be cooler then on the floor of it. maybe as low as the cool side even. Also light heat is a bit more like nature and nice if the snake wants to "bask in the sun".
I mostly went this way because I already owned everything to set this up.
 
I don't know about basking in the sun, but at dusk in the wild they'll crawl onto roads and rocks and things that have been heated by the sun to warm themselves. When they do that they're using belly heat.
 
Mary-Beth is KoRny said:
I don't know about basking in the sun, but at dusk in the wild they'll crawl onto roads and rocks and things that have been heated by the sun to warm themselves. When they do that they're using belly heat.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's right. They're nocturnal animals, so it's not the sun that they're seeking, it's the stuff that's warmed by the sun (i.e. Rocks, roadways, etc). Think of it this way, when the sun goes down, they still look for warm places like that (which is why road cruising works).

And as far as the hatchling and the light, etc... Keep in mind, you have a hatchling. As the snake grows, it'll become less arboreal and be spending more and more time on the ground.
 
i actually use both uth and heat lamp. especially at night i need to use the heat lamp because its starting to get realy cold :(
 
Okay, so here is a question. If, in the wild, they depend on the sun heating up an area to rest on, couldn't you theoretically put a rock under the lamp, and the lamp would heat that similar to the sun and the road? I'm not trying to start a conflict here. I have a UTH and a clamp lamp. Pop likes to climb as well, but i make sure to use the uth when he's eating, and for the next day at least.
 
popcornsmama said:
Okay, so here is a question. If, in the wild, they depend on the sun heating up an area to rest on, couldn't you theoretically put a rock under the lamp, and the lamp would heat that similar to the sun and the road? I'm not trying to start a conflict here. I have a UTH and a clamp lamp. Pop likes to climb as well, but i make sure to use the uth when he's eating, and for the next day at least.
Click to expand...

Here's the problem with your theory:
Yes, the rock will potentially heat up from a lamp place above the rock. However, once the lamp is turned off, the rock will lose heat fairly quickly. This rate/time of the cooling of the rock can actually be plugged into a calculus differential equation to figure out how long the rock will hold the heat (hey, I actually learned something in college :) ), but I am not going to get into that.

More simply put, an everyday example is how bridges ice before roads. Have you ever seen the signs "bridge ices before road"?; the same principle works with cooling as does with heating. Bridges ice faster than roads because the body (the bridge) has less mass than the road, which is essentially connected to the ground.

A smaller body, with less mass (ie. a rock) will heat up faster than a larger body with more mass, but will release that heat much faster than a larger body. So roads will stay warmer for much longer than rocks. I hope this helps, and makes some sort of sense.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top