Check your heat tape!

Yesterday, I went to pull out one of my tubs and it was sticking so I checked my heat tape on my CB-70 rack and the tape looked to be warped and damaged. Closer inspection showed that it was sparking! So I pulled everyone out and put them in smaller, holder tubs and into my incubator which was still set at ~87 from hatching and pulled out the heat tape. As you can see in the pictures, it has torn and become a fire hazzard, and could have shocked me or my animals. I don't really know how this happened. Everything is run on a thermostat and temperatures are monitored daily. This is just a friendly reminder to check your equiptment every once in a while to make sure everything is ok.

http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file.../heattape3.jpg

http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file.../heattape1.jpg

http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...4/heattape.jpg

A lot of the time this occurs from sliding tubs over the tape. The tape gets creased, bent, snagged if you may...then the tub wears away at the tape like an open wound every time you pull the tub in and out.

Thats why its a good idea to have a routed slot to run your heat tape along rather than allowing tubs to sits directly on top of the tape. This will help prevent the constant wear to the heat tape and more importantly reduce the risk of harming your animals or anyone else in the household.

Now is this the case with your situation...I don't know. Just reminded me of what I have encountered before and thought I would share.

this was in a rack made by reptile basics and it did in fact have the routed out slot for the tape to sit into. I think when I order new tape to put in it, i will put it into the slot and use aluminum tape over it to protect it.