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oh the joys of heating problems

T

Temerairecorns

New member
i have prob thermometers on all of my tanks and have had my snakes since late July problem is while the hot side of the corn snake enclosure used to get up to 80* it now only gets up to 73* the king snakes is just as bad it barely gets up to 80* the tank we have for our beardie wont go up past 90 either and he's used to high 90s i've tried new bulbs bigger bulbs i even replaced the thermometers nothing is working. we don't have a heater and i'm worried that the temps will drop further if we get one of our heavy frosts, or worse a snow, they are rare up here but apparently they do happen. we moved up here in august and everyone but the dragon is still just a baby none of the snakes is over 2ft any advice would be appreciated.
 
Try putting heat pads on the snakes and keep the light over it to the ambient temperature up. For the beardie maybe try a ceramic heat emitter (they produce heat but no light so it can stay on all night), you still may need a basking light during the day along with it. You'll probably need night time lights too. Your going to have to play around with wattage but that's all I can think to do with heat in the house.
 
Can you move them into a room with as few windows as possible, and maybe heavy drapes? Might even try velcro-ing some sort of fabric that holds in heat well to the glass sides of the tanks?
 
I think I'd buy undertank heaters for the Corns (don't know anything about Dragons, sorry). Overhead heat sources can be wasted on them anyway. They spend all their time on the floor and they don't bask, so heating the air above them isn't much use especially if low ambient temps are going to result in the problems you're seeing. A UTH will give you much more control over the temps on the floor, where the Corns are.

Beware that you'll also need a thermostat with a UTH as they're designed for use with a range of reptiles and most makes/models get well over a Corn's safe maximum without regulation. If the Corns are set up the same and have the same make/model of UTH, you can use one stat to control them both (plug a multiway socket into the stat and the UTHs into the multiway).
 
Do you mean your _house_ doesn't have heat, or just the reptiles? Heat is essential for them in the winter.
 
Touch wood, I've never had heating problems with my snakes. Even from humid summers, air conditioning and now the freezing cold of winter, my tanks have changed at most 2*. I find the Exo Terra therms not very acurate, but my Zoo Med pretty much match the temp gun exactally.
But I do have to put an extra 100 watt basking bulb on my beardie tank.
 
i have a UTH with the reptile carpet stuff, and i bought a cheap $10 dimmer from home depot, and use that to tone down the pad when needed. even with that, the probe (right over the center of the UTH, pinned down inside one of those log caves i use as my "hot hide") only reads mid to high 80's at the highest setting on the dimmer.
 
patches152 said:
i have a UTH with the reptile carpet stuff, and i bought a cheap $10 dimmer from home depot, and use that to tone down the pad when needed. even with that, the probe (right over the center of the UTH, pinned down inside one of those log caves i use as my "hot hide") only reads mid to high 80's at the highest setting on the dimmer.
Click to expand...

I have almost the same setup but not using the carpet and my heat pad will jump the temp up to 110f in a matter of mins and was still climbing, I havnt had the dimmer over 1/3 power yet to keep it at 85. Have you tryed using a diffrent outlet? maby your outlet is mesing up if you use the same one for all your heating pads.

Just a thought.
 
Allalaskan said:
I have almost the same setup but not using the carpet and my heat pad will jump the temp up to 110f in a matter of mins and was still climbing, I havnt had the dimmer over 1/3 power yet to keep it at 85. Have you tryed using a diffrent outlet? maby your outlet is mesing up if you use the same one for all your heating pads.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...

i only have one snake, one tank, one pad.

no, it's the carpet. it's a pretty good insulator. i've used a volt meter to check the power out of the outlet, and the power out of the dimmer to see how much of a difference it makes. if i removed the carpet, the temp would spike at least 10*-20*. which is ok, since it seems that my snake only wants the REALLY hot side right after he's eaten. otherwise, he's on the cool side or cruising around, checking stuff out.

i used to have aspen, but it was messy and i got tired of cleaning it up every time i had to change water or whatever. now i just have two carpets. one in the tank, and one that's clean and ready to swap in case he goes potty on it. they're easy to clean too.
 
ok I was just checking, I know some times outlets do go bad or wiring will wear out and sometimes you can get a small short and not get all the power. If you checked it then it sould be fine. I just thought I would throw that out there.
 
tanks for all the advice

that's what worries me all of the tanks baring the beardie's (when i first adopted him he was badly burned and had been left in the rain so i don't use one with him he has enough bedding to completely cover himself if he choses,) have an under tank heater. i is even tried putting the prob under the substrate. i will however invest in bigger ceramic heat bulbs thanks
 
Temerairecorns said:
that's what worries me all of the tanks baring the beardie's (when i first adopted him he was badly burned and had been left in the rain so i don't use one with him he has enough bedding to completely cover himself if he choses,) have an under tank heater. i is even tried putting the prob under the substrate. i will however invest in bigger ceramic heat bulbs thanks
Click to expand...

the main thing to realize is the difference between species. some bask to get heat, some get radiant and conductive heat from the ground. corn snakes are the latter, apparently. mine will bask sometimes, but only when it's really close to blood bath time!!!!!! :smash: *

*(that's what i call feeding day)
 
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