Heat help

It's been a while since I've posted here...
So about 6 months ago, I purchased a 3 shelve adult BP rack from AnimalPlastics. I purchased the kind designed to hold 41qt sterilite tubs. Let me first say that the rack itself it PHENOMENAL. I was a bit upset over the 10 week shipping period but otherwise, pretty satisfied. I am housing three adult ball pythons in said rack. The rack came with a long strip of 3" flexwatt (or something similar) heat tape. I have the heat tape underneath each tub of course. My problem comes with the fact that my BP's have stopped eating and one of them has a URI (it's being treated). The ambient temp in the room is 86"F 24/7. The ambient temp NEVER fluctuates. The heat tape is set to 97"f and even at that temp, I personally cant feel a difference in the tubs and my temp gun can't hardly find a difference either... In addition, a measly 3" of heat across the bottom seems like nothing compared to the size of the animal. My question is, should I switch to an 11" heat tape? That is all... Thanks in advance!

I have only 3" in all my racks and it works just fine. Honestly, you may need to bump up the thermostat. I have one of mine set to 104 degrees in order to achieve 89 degrees in the tub. It just depends on a lot. Have you tried turning it up one degree at a time and testing it with your temp gun?

How's your humidity? That can cause an RI as well, if it's too low. As far as not eating. Well, it's that time of the year.

I use 11" radiant in my 41 quart racks. I noticed that when I was using a rack with 3-4" belly heat, they spent all their time lying on it rather than moving around much.

A temp gun can also give screwy readings on reflective surfaces.
My triple check is one tub that I use for storage. It has an Accurite in the front of the tub so I can read it and the "outdoors" probe is taped to the rear inside of it to get an exact surface temp. I just rotate this tub through the racks every couple months as a maintenance check.

I use PVC cages, but I've noticed with plastic that the heat doesn't get through so well. I think it is important to listen to your thermometers, rather than just your themrostats in this situation, simply because of how much heat actually gets threw the plastic. For example, to get my ball python's hot spot to 90F I have my thermostat set to 106F. I was very worried, considering my thermostat only allows to be set to 108F. However, it has been working well like this for several weeks when I set it up.

Is there a way to cool down the room temp a couple of degrees, giving more variation in temperature? Even 82F to 90F might be better than 86F to 90F, you know?
If you can aim for a 10F difference I believe that is optimal.

I don't think you need an 11" tape, but I don't know too much about racks apart from what I've read on here. I'd just try to lower the ambient room temp a few degrees, and up the hot spot until it is about 90F inside the tub on the hotspot, checking with two different thermometers (if possible).

Best of luck!

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Originally Posted by Mchristy

It's been a while since I've posted here...
So about 6 months ago, I purchased a 3 shelve adult BP rack from AnimalPlastics. I purchased the kind designed to hold 41qt sterilite tubs. Let me first say that the rack itself it PHENOMENAL. I was a bit upset over the 10 week shipping period but otherwise, pretty satisfied. I am housing three adult ball pythons in said rack. The rack came with a long strip of 3" flexwatt (or something similar) heat tape. I have the heat tape underneath each tub of course. My problem comes with the fact that my BP's have stopped eating and one of them has a URI (it's being treated). The ambient temp in the room is 86"F 24/7. The ambient temp NEVER fluctuates. The heat tape is set to 97"f and even at that temp, I personally cant feel a difference in the tubs and my temp gun can't hardly find a difference either... In addition, a measly 3" of heat across the bottom seems like nothing compared to the size of the animal. My question is, should I switch to an 11" heat tape? That is all... Thanks in advance!

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Are you saying it's set to 97 on the thermostat? You have thermometer on there to measuring the actual temperature on the hotspot rightk because my thermostat is set almost to 100 to get it to reach 90