Cooling Colubrids

Living in Florida where even on the coldest winter days my apartment never gets below 68 degrees I'm looking for ways to cool my Colubrids.

My first question obviously would be is it even necessary?

• for the general well-being of the snakes
  
• for breeding purposes

Has anyone used an active cooling system?

What do you think would work best

• Homemade heat exchanger/fans
  
• cold water system that goes under the cage to actively cool the floor (like Flexwatt but in reverse)
  
• small window unit air conditioner with output ducted into cages
  
• small room (6' x 9' closet) cooled down to proper temperatures

Thanks for any input!

You got another kingsnake?

No, but my girlfriend wants to get into Colubrids while I do pythons... I just want to make sure that we can actually make this work before we jump in.

We might be coming home from the Daytona show with a few new worms if so

Hey Aaron - My suggestion would be a temperature controlled room. Personally with cooling I would try and stay away from any elaborate cooling elements especially ducting AC into your racks or cages. If needed, I would drop your ambient temps in your reptile room and then go from there... Just my 2 cents.

I have done both cooling and not cooling.

I used to cool at 58/60 degrees now all I do is shut off the hot spot and only use ambient temps which during the winter is 68 degrees in my office where my colubrids are kept (as opposed to 74 during the warm months)

Results have been the same and therefore I not longer bother with cooling just turning off the hot spot and stop feeding during that time.

I'm no expert but I have a king and two corns and I haven't cooled any over the winter, even when my king went off feed. I didn't experience any health issues and the king hardly lost any weight from going off food, though I did read that cooling will help the snake against loosing too much weight if they do go off feed.

If I did cool I think I would simply put them in a different room/location that has lower temps or turn off the UTH.

Aaron, there are quite a few corn breeders in Florida, and I'm sure breeders of other colubrids...maybe you can try to contact some of them.

There are many species of colubrid that will not breed unless you cool them - russian rats are one and I have never had any luck getting louisiana pines to breed without brumating them.

Using a very small room with an air conditioner will be your best bet.

here is what i do......

its made of 2" thick styro sheets and powered by one window AC unit. got it down in the low 60s high 50s. this year i am adding a wood frame, a better door system and a bigger AC unit so i can get the temps lower although it worked this year.

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sometimes......i keep it gangster!