I read and looked up a lot of racks that were on the web and tried to take what I thought were good things from each of them. I am only trying to to collect a few nice snakes (at least a first) so I didn't need anything high volume or crazy. I ended up making a rack that holds 10 sterlite 32 quarts tubs. 2 Wide and 5 Tall. I made it out of melamine and 2x4s and then painted it and used pegboard to finish up the look. I used heavy dude casters to make it easy to move and left the 2x4s sticking up a little bit to be able to push it around if needed. (scroll down for pics) I am almost done and am at the heating part and had a few questions.

First off, thermostats/dimmers. I think I have decided on a basic herpstat to use in on/off. The room where my snake rack will be is in the 70-80 degree range all year (south florida). I have read a lot of postings saying that no matter how good your thermostat is, that you should use a dimmer as a back up in case it fails to limit that max power that would go straight the the heat tape. For an extra 10 bucks this doesn't sound like a bad idea but what do you guys think?

Secondly, I bought the 11 inch flexwatt that isnt in panels and can be cut any length and was going to cut 10 8x11 inch pieces, one for each tub. The pro to this is that the wires can exit out of the back and keep it a lot cleaner. This would cover about 1/3 of the tubs bottom. Should I make them cover more or less than 1/3?

Lastly my biggest question is where should I attach the probe? I can do it directly to the heat tape but im not sure thats the exact temperature that will translate to the inside of the tub where the pythons will lay. Do i need to measure the actual inside of the tub and adjust from there or do I just set the prob and assume the inside will be the same?







My first and only BP at the moment, my female "Fluffy." She is about 700 grams.