rubbermaid home

[reptilian~witch]

I have read the instructions on making a rubbermaid habitat for a BP, but I was a little unsure about how you heat that... Can you use an under tank heater? Wouldent think so. I dont know, using a lamp seems a little dangerious to me... :?:

[gen]

Under tank heater works fine. As long as there is some space underneath.

[Nate]

yeah they won't get hot enough to melt the plastic...if the heater is hot enough to melt the plastic.......give me your snake (kidding)

Cut a large hole in the top of the rubbermaid and drill small holes around the hole. then, get some wire mesh and put the wire mesh over the hole. Use a heat lamp over the mesh....yeah, the heat lamp may get hot enough to melt the plastic. but a heating pad, no. If i had a digital camera, i'd snap a pic of my snakes home and post it...

[reptilian~witch]

That would be nice. Thanks

[SatanicIntention]

I use 2 heat pads underneath mine, and no melting has taken place I am planning on putting a lamp in soon for the winter, it just gets perty cold in my boyfriend's old house. Stays around 70 or so, but still too cool for the air temp. I plan on using hardware cloth, it's wire mesh covered with rubber/plastic so Amani won't rub her nose on that rough wire (Marla told me about it, Thanks Marla!)

Also, you don't necessarily have to cut a hole in the lid for a lamp. If you can just use heat pads(with a thermostat attached of course) and get the temps right in the enclosure, then you are fine. Lamps kill humidity, even though keeping humidity in a rubbermaid/sterilite/iris container is very easy. Just be sure to use a digital thermometer/hygrometer as the dial thermos/hygros they sell at pet stores are usually very inaccurate and you could be cooking or freezing your snake and not know it. Those can be found at WalMart for $15, and the brand is AccuRite.

I know I'm just blabbing on forever, but it's important stuff Hope it helped some.

[DrEwTiMe]

Do you have pads on under the hot and cold side sataniclntention??

[SatanicIntention]

Yep, they both are on the same setting, but run at different temps. One keeps the hot side at 93-95 and the other keeps the cool side 83-85. It's pretty cool. I will be getting thermostats for xmas so I won't have to worry about moving the settings up and down depending on how cool/warm the house is. Kind of irritating. But whatever gets the job done, huh?

[DrEwTiMe]

how can you keep them at a specific setting without a thermostat, do your heat pads have a temp setting dial or something?

[SatanicIntention]

No, they just have the high, medium, low settings, but it just depends on what setting they are at, how cool the room is, how many layers of newspaper I put down, how high/low they are off of the heat pads(I use these foot long 1/2"x1" wood blocks to lift the enclosure up). There are just alot of different things I played around with and now it's really stable temp-wise and humidity wise. For humidity I usually soak one of her clay pots and that brings the humidity around 50-60% for a few days and then I just soak them again. I also have a humid hide in there for her, so I really don't have to soak the clay pots, but I don't want her breathing in incredibly dry air when she's not in the humid hide.

It's really not too difficult if you play around with all of the settings and whatnot before you get the snake, which is what I did. I know the cage I had for her before(a smaller rubbermaid) was a pain getting the temps right, gettin the bigger one helped alot, and she seems to feel secure enough in there to cruise around since it's not too incredibly see through, but still see-through enough for me to see her a little bit.

[Marla]

Those can be found at WalMart for $15, and the brand is AccuRite.

Becky's got you pretty well covered here, but just to clarify, the brand is actually Acu-Rite and they can usually be found with the big outdoor thermometers in the hardware section of WalMart, near paint and plumbing and such. It's not hard to get a Rubbermaid or Sterilite set up so that it takes very little maintenance, but it will take some tweaking at first to get it right.