What can I do to make sure this never happens again?

Hey everyone.

I just got back from a trip and had a major freak out with my snakes. I bought a new lesser while I was gone so I put him in a tub and went go to get all my luggage and stuff from the car.

About 30 minutes later I come back and check on him... and the hot side temp is 132. A hundred freaking thirty two! I have my snakes in an AP rack regulated by a herpstat 1. Apparently when I moved one of the tubs around, the probe got dislodged.

I immediately took all the snakes out and fixed it. The temps were only that high for about half an hour and they all seem to be fine.

I thought the herpstat 1 had ways of preventing this from happening? I set the high/low shutoff temps to 100 and 80 but the herpstat kept reading the probe at around 96 (probably because an inch away from the 130 degree heat tape it WAS 96 degrees? Not sure.)

What can I do to prevent this from happening again?



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When the probe got dislodged it was reading the temp away from the hot spot so the thermostat didn't know it was so toasty

The two solutions are to either really tape down your probe to keep it from moving or buy another thermostat and plug the first one into the second one and then set the second one 5 degrees higher than the first one so if the first fails the second one will kick in once it gets 5 degrees hotter. place the second probe away from the first but in a similar position to read the top heat of the rack.

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Originally Posted by piedlover79

When the probe got dislodged it was reading the temp away from the hot spot so the thermostat didn't know it was so toasty

The two solutions are to either really tape down your probe to keep it from moving or buy another thermostat and plug the first one into the second one and then set the second one 5 degrees higher than the first one so if the first fails the second one will kick in once it gets 5 degrees hotter. place the second probe away from the first but in a similar position to read the top heat of the rack.

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I might do that, thanks. I have a cheap hydrofarm, would that be okay to use as a backup?

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You can also do the same thing with lamp dimmers, if your tape has separate plugs you can plug in each dimmer and set it , so if that happens again you'll have each tub/ cage regulated so it can only put so much power through it no matter what.

I like that idea and it would be less spendy. You'd just have to play around with the dimmer.

I haven't used a hydrofarm so I can't speak to it. I use boaphila thermostats

Best tape to tape anything down is 3m hvac tape get it all lowes. How depot for 16$ a roll. Do not get the cheap foil tape. Foil tape doesn't hold plus hvac tape is extremely good vs heat and won't peel off

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The Herpstat has a way to limit the power to the heat tape. So, if you see that the Herpstat never exceeds 40%, perhaps set the limit to 50%. Won't solve everything but would definitely reduce the time it takes for the tape to heat up. I'd also tighten up on the temperature max/min you have set. The Herpstat is pretty accurate. The temperature on mine stays within +/- 1°.


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