So I haven't gotten my ball yet, because I want to make sure the tank is more-or-less perfect ahead of time. Yesterday morning I hooked up the UTH to a thermostat (Reptitemp from ZooMed) and plugged in my infrared light on the other side. It's been over 24 hours, so I feel like the tank has reached a fairly stable temperature by now.

Over the past day, I've been keeping an eye on the thermometers to see what kind of range I'm getting. On my hot (UTH) side, the thermometer probe is usually listing between 87 and 89 degrees F. On the cool (red bulb) side, the probe is listing between 80 and 83. Is that an acceptable range? I feel like the hot side should be crossing the line into the low 90s, but I'm not sure where I got that impression. Also, even if I did want to increase the heat on the hot side, I couldn't - because the dial on my Reptitemp is turned to the highest possible setting!

So you have an idea, I'm using a 10-gallon tank. I've got the back and sides covered with black mat-board. I have a screen-top that is about 2/3 covered by aluminum foil to hold in heat/humidity. My substrate is aspen over newspaper. The hot side probe is under a hide, the cool side probe is lying exposed to lamp on the aspen since I still need to get another hide for that side.

Another quick question: I know balls can burn themselves easily, so you need to keep heat sources out of their reach. Is it dangerous to have a heat lamp resting directly on the screen? Right now I'm using a clip to keep it several inches above the screen, but I feel like I'm wasting a lot of heat/light that way.