Late last night, I was getting ready for bed when I noticed a few tubs had condensation on them... I figured it was from their soggy (f/t) rodents I'd fed earlier in the evening, but pulled out a tub to dry it off. As soon as I pulled out the tub I noticed it felt REALLY hot, so I looked at the digital thermometer above - and the temperature was 135F!!

I immediately (and rather frantically) pulled all the other tubs out, and turned down the rheostat to 80ish. It eventually cooled back down, so I returned the snakes to their rack, and then turned the dial up a notch since temps had dropped to the mid-80s. Then when I was getting ready this morning, I noticed it had jumped back up to 120+! I had to leave for work, so I pulled every tub out far enough to not be on the heat tape, and dialed the rheo back down under 80. I'm stuck here at work until at least 6pm, so hopefully that will do until I return. The ambient temps in that room are right around 79-80F, and I figure that's better than having them fry while I'm gone.

Sooo, what would cause a sudden spike like this? As you can see, I use a rheostat on this rack (only one rack has an actual thermostat), since that's usually fine in our mild climate here. Should I just get a new rheo on the way home, or might the problem be with the actual heat tape? Only other thing that really happened last night was a mouse hunt, when one of the live mice I was feeding got loose - and I trapped him right on top of the power strip which controls this rack. Maybe the mouse and/or I knocked something loose? Unfortunately I'm not sure where to get a rack-friendly thermostat nearby, as the local pet stores only sell rheos AFAIK. Hopefully a new one will fix things, but any input would be great.

P.S. Snakes seem fine, they were just all squeezed on the un-heated sides of their tubs. LOL