Temp issue with home made cage

Ok I built a 8x20x5 Acrylic enclosure out of .100" acrylic and trimmed it with aluminum angle iron.. Set it up yesterday with my 2 hides water dish and a peice of paper towel..

I have a herpstat + an the "snake startup kit" from all things living at petsmart I got it for 15$ on sale anyway I'm pretty sure the Uth is garbage.. I have the t stay set for 100.5deg and the probe is reading 100.4 but my infared thermometer is reading no higher then 86deg for a hot spot inside the hide

If 92 is my goal I think some heat tape is in order what do u think? Is the Uth just not able to heat trough that thin of plastic.. It's 72 ambient in my room as of now I have a lamp to help warm the tank thru winter..

I have it set on a bath towel on my dresser where is my heat going?

Tryong to get everything right cuz I get my bp on Sunday

You need a gap between the bottom of the UTH and whatever the enclosure is resting on. It kinda seems like all your heat might be going into the towel.

Do you have a probe thermometer to check the surface temp? If the herpstat is reading the probe at 100 then I am inclined to believe the herpstat over the infrared. What kind of infrared is it?

It could also be a crappy UTH. They sell Flexwatt at the AAE and I'm sure they have some already wired up, or they will wire it for you. A heat lamp will do fine for the short term, but I think belly heat is beneficial since that is where the snake hangs out.

Ya I know all about belly heat.. I can prolly wire the fleck watt my self and planed on getting some. The infrared I have is made by ATD which sells automotive tools mainly I use it at work when working on hvac for cars

That is strange that there is such a difference in what the herpstat reads and what your Infrared thermometer gives you.

Hopefully its a problem with the UTH! If you can wire flexwatt yourself, you can just buy some by the foot. usually only $3-4

Can't see it being to hard I've wired complete cars b4 lol I pulled the towel out a few min ago it's on a wood dresser.. So if that isn't better then the towel could I try aluminum foil maybe?

Athe uth isn't. A stick on type. It'slike crappy heat tape lol

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Originally Posted by BoostedMX3

Athe uth isn't. A stick on type. It'slike crappy heat tape lol

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hmm, yeah I would try some new heat tape from AAE. It is super easy to wire, takes like 10 minutes.

What's your ambient temp? What kind of bedding and how thick? I run my T-stat at 99 and it gives me a hot spot of 88 in a 74 degree ambient room. If I switch from paper towels to aspen, that hot spot can shoot up to above 99 because of how the aspen traps the heat. This is using a Herpstat 2 and FlexWatt.


Fiddle with the space between the enclosure and table, the tape and enclosure, and your substrate before you decide to buy something new. You really don't want to run the tape much hotter than 100 degrees.

Paper towels.. And room temp is 72 I have a lamp with a daylight bulb that will get it up to 85-90 when I have it on there tho