Heating?

I was pondering the idea of overhead heating today.
Do beardies require it?
I have several enclosures and 3 of them hace CHEs and flex-a-watt under them. One of my males seems to rather dig down for his heat than climb his rock to get closer to the CHE.
This made me think about how much less power i would be using with 46 watts of mat per housing than 150 watt CHE.

Currently the one that have multiple heating are beacuse they are in the living room where it is a little cooler ambient temps. Soon they will be grtting their own room that will be heated so this has me thinking about what changes i could make.

I don't think they require it long as you can give them proper temps and gradient. I've never seen a beardie enclosure w/o overhead lighting/heating though. I know they NEED UVB so you'll already need some type of emitter for UVB. If they don't require UVA, I would think you'd able to go without O/H heating.



Mind you this is what I've seen with other peoples' beardies and don't have much hands on XP with them.

Yeah i know the UV requirements. Just heating is the queston.
The new rack is going to have 4 foot fixtures.

That is an interesting question...Our beardie has over head heating and no heat mats, because we were always told that the overhead lights simulate getting heat from the sun like they do in the wild, so i have never even tried belly heat...