My problems with temps, and how I fixed it

[Nate]

I've had my rack for only a few weeks. It's my first rack so I was still learning and I made a mistake that isn't covered in the normal reading of setting up a rack...after all, I thought a rack was a "plug n play" system, when in actuality it takes more work than I thought it would.

The set up was as follows:

4 high rack, only 2 snakes right now so i had them in the middle 2 tubs. the top and bottom tubs are out...no snakes in them. My thermostat probe was taped to the flexwatt heat tape on the top section.

After a few days I noticed my temps (measured by an acurite) were creeping up very slowly...94 one day..95 the next....the way I solved this was to pull the tub out and let it cool off for a while...i thought this was normal

Until i came in the other day with temps around 100 degrees

No worries, snakes are fine...I contacted a local reptile breeder (thank you Alice) in hopes i could get a few tips real quickly on how to solve this problem..we went over a list of things that I was to do in order to solve this problem. Right before I started, i thought to myself, What if the temps are getting so high is because of my Tstat probe is exposed to the tape and air...there's no tub over it like the other ones, so instead of heat rising into the tubs, the heat is rising into only air and it's throwing the tstat probe off

So I put the top tub in so it was over the probe and the heat tape...about 3 hours later I looked at the temp on my acurite and the hot side is ~93...perfect!!

So the simple solution was to put the tub over the heat probe on the flexwatt tape...and that solved my hot temp problem...

trial and error and experience is something I need more of. I guess i'll get plenty of it as the years come. I don't know if this will help anyone out, but I just thought someone down the road may have a similar problem, or experienced it in the past.

[kavmon]

hey nate, glad you finally got the setup right.


check out my post in this thread.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=35129



vaughn

[Nate]

ah yeah it makes sence. You told me to put them in in the first place..thanks man

[mmchoppers]

Awesome! I never took my extra tubs out, so I never had your problem. I was having a problem with the temps being too low, but it was because my room was really cold and the flexwatt couldn't heat the tub. To solve that I just bought a space heater. Glad you fixed your problem though!!

[mmchoppers]

I just realized that my baby shelf has flexwatt on it with nothing covering the probe accept foil tape.. My temps don't get really high though, wierd?? Here is a picture.


I wonder why it affected you, but not me??

[juddb]

I know this is an older thread but, i had the same problem, i did all this tweeking and stressing cause the temps were getting really high. When all i had to do was put the tubs back into the rack... I felt retarded after everything was said and done...