ambient temps

[mebbekew]

hey all, new to the forum and would like to say thanks for all the great knowledge helping me get my tank setup properly.

i have a 20g with foil covering 3/4 of the screen. i have 2 zoomed uth's. one with a herpstat on my hot side, stays between 90-93...and one on the cool side with a reptitemp, 79-84. My humidity is around 55-60 without a heat lamp, 35-40 with. and thats with the lamp on the foil with holes punched in it. as for now im going with lamp and misting occasionally.

the temps in the house vary by about 8 degrees(72 at night 80 during the day when no one is home) my only issue is my ambient temp at night, the ambient temp during the day is around 82 at night it drops as low as 74 at times. all i've read says to shoot for 80, but i can only get that high with a lamp that kills my humidity(even with the lamp night ambient is 78).

anyone have a suggestion to help raise my ambient without lowering humidity? or is the ambient even an issue, seeing as 95% of her time is spent on a uth?

[Vypyrz]

Hello, and to BP.net...

80F is what you should ideally shoot for, however, since you are using 2 UTH's, nightly dips down to about 75 won't really hurt them, since they have acces to the correct temps from the belly heat, and the hides themselves should help hold some of the heat inside. If you know the temps are going to go below 75 at night, then you may want to use the lamp for a bit. When I was using heat lamps for supplemental heat, I bought a digital light timer from Wal-Mart and programmed it so the light would come on for about 30 minutes and then shut-off for about 45-60 minutes and then come back on, or something close to that...

[mebbekew]

good idea, thanks a lot!

[stevepoppers]

Get a Ceramic Heat Emitter bulb for the lamp. Put it on a timer to come on at night, or for a while at night. That way the brightness doesn't stress them out. You could cover more of the top, leaving only a hole for the lamp. That worked pretty well for me.

[mebbekew]

i have a red bulb in my lamp, so not worried about the light so much. would a CHE dry out less than the bulb?