Heating Issue With Flexwatt

Okay, so about 2 months ago we got a 2005 normal female and she hadn't eaten since and was very timid in the half 55 Gallon tank we had her in.

So we decided to switch her to a 41 Qt tub since this is probably what she is most used to. We also got 11" flexwatt to go underneath. The flexwatt is working fine, maybe a little too well. It runs anywhere from about 95-105 at the hottest inside the hide. No matter what we do we can't seem to get the heat below 95. The only thing we've been able to do is layer up paper thicker and thicker in order to try and lessen the heat, which works but we'd rather not have an inch of newspaper over the heater just to keep the temperature in the right range. We also raised the tub from about 1/4" high to about an inch off the table from the bottom of the flexwatt to see if that would help with the ventilation underneath. It's hooked up to a ZooMed rheostat set to the lowest setting.

Any help would be greatly appreciated . . .

What thermostat are you using to regulate the flexwatt???

It's on a rheostat.

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Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

What thermostat are you using to regulate the flexwatt???

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I just saw the zoo med thing.. those things are more suited for use on UTH and not flexwatt..

My suggestion would be buy an economy proportional thermostat like a Johnson or the like..

Another suggestion would be to spend the $20 bucks (cheaper than a t-stat) and buy an Under Tank Heater. Try hooking that up to your rheostat and watching temps. It may keep you from having to get a thermostat.

If, however, you intend on adding more snakes in the future, i.e. more tubs, then I might be inclined to splurge now and buy the thermostat.

Hope that helps,

There's a red tail boa breeder around here who runs her stuff off of an Alife thermostat. I recommend Herpstat personally but Ranco and Johnson controls make good, cheaper alternatives. Rheostats are sensitive to room temp changes.

I have one of those zoo-med rheostats and it is total junk. I can't tell any difference between having it set on the highest to the lowest setting to skipping the rheostat entirely and plugging the UTH directly in to the wall, so what good does it do to have it at all? From what I've read, I've gathered that the zoo-med t-stats have poor quality control, some work great and others don't, so I guess maybe the same is true with the rheostat and you and I happened to get bad ones.

If you don't want to spend the money on a t-stat, go to home depot or lowe's and get a light dimmer switch, which is a rheostat that actually works.

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Originally Posted by muddoc

Another suggestion would be to spend the $20 bucks (cheaper than a t-stat) and buy an Under Tank Heater. Try hooking that up to your rheostat and watching temps. It may keep you from having to get a thermostat.

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I usually really respect and agree with what Tim has to say, but in this case since I suspect the rheostat doesn't work properly, I'm not sure that switching what heating device it is hooked up to will do any good. I was using mine with a UTH during the brief time I used it before I switched to light dimmers then eventually to a t-stat.

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Originally Posted by kc261

I usually really respect and agree with what Tim has to say, but in this case since I suspect the rheostat doesn't work properly, I'm not sure that switching what heating device it is hooked up to will do any good. I was using mine with a UTH during the brief time I used it before I switched to light dimmers then eventually to a t-stat.

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I will not argue with Casey's point, but I will interject that my thinking was more along the lines of Flexwatt being an after market product. Meaning, that you, or someone other than a manufacturer has to make a connection on the flexwatt. If the contact points are not goo, and one side of the flexwatt has a poor connection, the power could be irregular to the strip of Flexwatt.

With that said, the cheapest route to possible problem resolution might be to buy an UTH. However, Casey brings up a good point, in that buying another rheostat is not expensive either. Troubleshooting those two devices would be step one in my book.

Everything is working fine now off of the ZooMed Rheostat. We did take a few measures that worked for us. We changed the hide from a homemade-cardboard hide to a homemade plastic hide which perfectly regulates the temperature. We aso raised the box off the ground by about another half an inch as well as changing the room temperature from about 80 to around 77. Now all the temperatures are where they should be.

AND . . .

Today she gave us a PERFECT shed. We had to unroll the thing but it was a complete in one piece shed.