I have a juvenile kingsnake that's giving me a bit of a problem. Hiss (as we named him) lives in a 20long glass cage that I've set up with an under-tank heating. Inside the tank I use a layer of reptile carpet and then a substrate of shredded coconut bark. The probe from his Helix thermostat -- that the tank heater is plugged into -- runs down the back of the tank, under the reptile carpet, and then is threaded up through the carpet so that it's measuring the temperature in about the middle of the shredded coconut substrate.

However, naughty Hiss is crawling UNDER the reptile carpet and lying directly on the glass over his heater. I'm sure you can see why I'm concerned about this. He has identical hides on the warm and cool end of the tank, but he ignores them in favor of burrowing under the carpet.

My question is -- should I be concerned about this? The temperature is set at 85 degrees on the warm side of the hide, in the middle of the substrate (ambient air temp in the hide is 75). Should I just ditch the repticarpet, and trust that 85 degrees won't burn him? It would be trivial to just tug the probe back under the reptile carpet so that it's measuring the temperature directly on the glass.

My ball python is so much better behaved ...