Start of Belly Burn Caught Early!!!

[gmmuscle91]

When i was feeding my bp today i noticed that her belly is really pink, and im positive she is not in shed. I am using flexwatt with a ranco thermostat set at 93 and everything was working fine. The problem was she was burrowing down to the glass under her water bowl, which is about halfway on the flexwatt. I have been watching her closely because of that and didnt notice any signs until today. I immediatley turned down the thermostat to 90 until i found a way to get it fixed. I fixed it by putting one of the openings against the glass and a piece of cardboard taped from the inside on the other side. I also switched her bedding to aspen from Eco-Earth. Now i have been taking small layers of aspen off so it can get back up to the right temp. Woo am i glad i caught it early.

[gmmuscle91]

Ok, another dilemma. My snake has outsmarted me. Even with both entrances blocked off, she still got under there. She burrowed under the aspen to get there. So any ideas as of how to keep her from further burning herself? Should I just measure the temp to where she burrows to so the themostat controls where she always spends her time and not the surface temp. That is pretty much the only place she hides now. Her other 2 hides are those black ones with a small entrance. I dont want her to get burned, but want to keep correct temps. Please help me!!!

[mr~python]

howbout switch to newspaper?

[elevatethis]

It sounds like your setup just needs some tweaking. First off...flexwatt performs best in our situation when the ambient room temperature is really high. For flexwatt to heat a glass cage hotspot as well as provide the proper ambient temps, the tape really has to work, creating a situation for burns if your snake contacted the tape indirectly through the bottom glass.

What to do? I don't really know for sure. You may want to look into heating the room to at least 78-80, and the heat tape will provide the proper basking temp without getting too hot to burn your snake.

[elevatethis]

It also depends a lot where your probe is placed. If you set your tstat at 90 and place the probe in the air above the substrate, I wouldn't be surprised if the tape was running at 100+ degrees. You can see how that can be a problem if your snake burrows down into the substrate and comes into contact with that. The flip side to that is if you place your probe to control the temperature of the heat tape directly, running it at 94 degrees underneath the glass and substrate isn't going to do much if anything for your ambient temps.