New tank setup!

[Diaspora]

Hey I went to a reptile fair and bought some new stuff, like an UTH
I was wondering if i still need to put my light bulbs or not (I have a red one for the night, and white one for the day)
I also changed the water bowl and put it on the cold side
There's also a big branch but I didn't put it in for the picture
What do you guys think?

[KMG]

The lights are a personal preference unless you need them to keep your air temp correct. I personally like having lights in my tanks so I provide them with a day bulb. For night I have a lamp in the room with a red bulb but that's more for me to check in on my collection at night than it is for them.

[Velrys]

BPs live in burrows, hunt at night, and don't require any UV light for health. So they really don't care one way or the other. That being said I think displays look prettier when illuminated and because of their night time activity having a bulb so you can see them when they are active is nice. But as you can see from just looking at rack systems opaque drawers are not uncommon, which is because BPs dont need light of any kind.

I would not however use any kind of heat lamp for night time illumination or during day time. You said you have a UTH so they can get heat if they need it but they also need to be able to get away from the heat if they need to so having too much heat in the tank should be avoided. Otherwise you can run into a situation where the snake spends its time in the water bowl trying to lose heat which can cause other health issues.

[Diaspora]

I switched off the lamp at night to see if the UTH was enough.. but the temp dropped at 21°C (71 F) waaaaay to cold! so i switched it back on around 2am
But at 6am my mom woke me up because there's was a smell like something was burning..
i think i'm going to avoid using the UTH for now.

what do you put underneath your UTH? (facing the furniture)

[Velrys]

Yikes. Its not like the UTH goes up to 150 degrees to get the tank to 90... so unless its sitting on styrofoam or like I don't know, kindling maybe, you shouldnt be scorching the furniture. As long as your hotspot, which should be in the hide, is staying up and your tank gets up past 78 during the day 71 isn't that big of a deal over night your snake will just stay in the hide.

Maybe look at the wire of your UTH see if there is a fray?

[bcr229]

Do you have a thermostat on the UTH? If not then yes it can get hot enough to burn things, including your snake.

[Velrys]

Wow, ya sorry, that is a great point.

I was assuming that since you knew the temp of your enclosure you had some control on your heat. But that is true, if you just plug the UTH into the wall it there is nothing keeping it from going crazy.

[bcr229]

Wow, ya sorry, that is a great point.

I was assuming that since you knew the temp of your enclosure you had some control on your heat. But that is true, if you just plug the UTH into the wall it there is nothing keeping it from going crazy.

LOL yeah I've learned that if someone has temperature questions and a UTH, it's safe to assume there's no t-stat in the setup.

[Diaspora]

Spotted the cause of the bad smell.. One of my fake plants melted on a bulb and now the sticky parts on it are "burning" causing the smell so the UTH isn't the problem
And I red about the thermostat but don't have one, yet
Gonna check the petstores or breeders if they sell some
Till then I won't use the UTH
Gonna put a thermometer at the hot side too, just to make sure it doesn't get too hot with bulb + UTH when I place it

Thanks everyone for the answers

[Velrys]

HA! bcr229 good call.

I guess it might be worth mentioning as well that checking the temp on that side of the tank isn't all that useful. You want your probe, the part of the thermometer that takes the reading, where he animal is. That would be inside the hide in the substrate down where the UTH is producing heat, or since you are currently using a bulb on the top surface of the hide which can get significantly hotter than inside if you are heating from the top.