Zoo Med's ReptiTemp 500R Remote Sensor Thermostat ... is it a good one?

Greetings Folks, I'm new here. my sone recently asked for a BP for his birthday so long story short, I just got Zoo Med's ReptiTemp 500R Remote Sensor Thermostat to control the heat with my two UTH's. is there anything I need to look out for with this unit, any plusses and minuses anyone has experienced. any feedback would be appreciated. We've got our Bumble Bee in a 20 long but I'm making an insulated variant on it's side with a plexiglass front sliding door... I'll post some picks in a bit in the DIY section, it's coming along nicely.

BOTH heat mats are identical?

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Originally Posted by PitOnTheProwl

BOTH heat mats are identical?

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yes, two small one's.

so far, I can report that this thermostat seems to work quite well, maintaining the set temp within a degree or two. the one thing I don't like about it is that it has a removable covering for the dial, I guess you can call it a cowling. It appears to be only designed to have a particular size of plug to be plugged in, it's not a bigy though, I'm just going to leave it off and keep it out of reach of the five year old.

hmm, after digging around here and reading up on related issues I am quickly becoming not a fan of this thermostat. it has dawned on me that having two heat mats plugged in but only one probe leaves the possibility that if the mat fails that does not have the probe over it, then the thermostat will not act as an automatic shut off, so that safety feature is thrown out the window. I got a heat gun yesterday and you just can't argue with facts, the temp swing is more significant than I'd thought and I'm now finding it quite tedious to nail the 90F target, over shooting and undershooting by 10 f. it seems and is confirmed by others here that temperature regulation is probably one of the keys to good reptile health. many folks worry about snakes getting burned but it seems to me that that is rare and that the biggest issue is that temperature swings make life more stressful and force movement on a creature that likes to find it's happy place and conserve energy for relatively long periods of time by not moving. Now i'm contemplating returning this unit and getting either a proportional thermostat or just controlling with a riostat and the heat gun. anyone willing to share their opinion of which is better? I'm guessing that no thermostat on the market has multiple probes? so considering that I have two small heat mats that a riostat and heat gun would offer the best fail safe for me. thoughts? On new enclosures, I'm going to stick with one UTH and probably go with a proportional thermostat. If herpstat + is only $50 more than zoo meds repti temp, it's kind of a no brainer. ...wishing there was a sticky that linked to all the relevant threads related to this subject, with a 5 and a 7 year old kid, it's taken me a while to find the threads and think it through, then again, I am grateful that so much information is available on this site.

Herpstat has several options, 1-6 probes I believe. I have several herpstat 4s that run radiant heat panels and flexwatt on my pvc cages. Many people run multiple identical heat on one probe but yes it is more risky, I run one probe per heating device myself. Burns are not rare at all, we see them around here often on unregulated or improperly regulated heat mats with glass tanks although most try to stress immediately to new members about the importance of regulating any heat source. Proportional thermostat would be far better than an on/off type or a rheostat for keeping temps correct.

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Originally Posted by GoingPostal

Herpstat has several options, 1-6 probes I believe. I have several herpstat 4s that run radiant heat panels and flexwatt on my pvc cages. Many people run multiple identical heat on one probe but yes it is more risky, I run one probe per heating device myself. Burns are not rare at all, we see them around here often on unregulated or improperly regulated heat mats with glass tanks although most try to stress immediately to new members about the importance of regulating any heat source. Proportional thermostat would be far better than an on/off type or a rheostat for keeping temps correct.

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thanks, that's great to know. for those of us not breeding or who just have one tank in question, is a riostat and heat gun adequate? And, is there a riostat that has a large enough control knob that it can be finally adjusted. the trouble I've been wrestling with with this thermostat is that the slightest turn of the small knob causes a large enough swing that it's hard to nail down. today I think I have it finally figured out, which makes me want to tape the thing down and or score the dial so I can easily get it back to where it was if it gets inadvertently moved.