I am planning out my soon to be stacking cage setup, and am leaning toward the Boaphile stacking cages. But since I am new to this sort of set up I fell like I don't entirely understand how the heating should done. I should add a bit of background, the hubby says that I can do whatever I want as long as it comes out of my paycheck, and I can have as many snakes as I want, as long as they all fit in one room (as in I can have a spare bedroom that only contains snakes and a small work desk), but he would like it if we can actually see them (so no tub racks). Over the next few years I'm planning to increase the collection to somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ animals to support future axanthic projects (fingers crossed some of those will be Bubbles' babies). Although I probably will end up selling off some hatchlings, I'm not thinking of this as a business, these animals are my pets and I want the best possible environment for them.
With that said, what is the best way to heat them? Radiant heat panels seem to offer the most natural option. But I doubt snakes in the wild hide inside plastic containers, which is what mine seem to spend most of their time doing. How deeply does the heat from these actually penetrate? This makes me think flexwatt would be the more effective option since I could be sure the heat would actually get to them. Is there a strong argument for one over the other? On the pricing side, yes flexwatt is cheaper, but do radiant panels use less power? I don't want to save in the short term if it's going to cost me more in the long term. Finally, how do people regulate heat on that many tanks? Do you really just add a herpstat for every cage? Or is there a larger scale system that I haven't read about yet?
Sorry, I know that's a lot of questions. I just want to do things correctly and consistently from the start. Thanks!