ambient versus floor temperature

I've been reading about some of the cage and rack setups and had a question. I noticed in a lot of the reptile stores there is only a spot light available. In one near us they just have the herps in a 'heated' room at a ambient 85 degrees throughout.

I suppose what I am asking is, do the stores do this just to save a buck or is it a feasible option if someone doesn't wire every rack of their caging with flexwatt, or alternative heating.

Most of the large breeders (I do this too but am not large :) ) heat the snake room to some ambient temp (usually 82-86). Most will also have a strip of heat tape to provide a "hot spot" in the tub so the snake can thermoregulate.


If you have a lot of snakes this is much easier then trying to get every cage setup perfectly with mutliple heat sources.

if you have an area,room, closet ,etc for your herps. it is easy to keep that area warm like 80+ deg. the heat tape doesn't have to work that hard and doesn't use that much power either. a small oil-filled heater on low will keep an average bedroom above 80 deg. year round.



vaughn

Wow, that is great news. We have a closet, an entire closet set aside that we could store our snakes in. I thought that they might appreciate that more since its removed from the noise, and rather dark and cozy. It's also very easy to keep warm since our office is typically at 80 degrees due to the computers unless we REALLY turn the AC down during the day. I hoped it that I could put a heater in the closet with them and save on electricity, space, and effort.

Thanks so much! I didn't want to try to do anything like that and risk the health of our scaley buddies if the floor NEEDED a hot spot. We might be adding to the snake family and I wanted to make certain I was on the right track before we did this.

in a cage or rack setup, you still need a hotspot of around 90 deg.! this is alot easier if the area is already 80 deg.:D the cool end will be the room temp.




vaughn