Rethinking belly heat

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Originally Posted by RichsBallPythons

By keeping belly heat your allowed to have room temps 75-80. But when you start using back heat room temps will need to be higher to maintain any stable temp

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I disagree.

First my room temp varies with the house temp, normally anywhere from low 70's to 80.

Belly heat worked fine for me until i switched from newspaper to substrate, then the substrate was screwing up my temps. I switched to back heat and temps have been spot on. Room temp never changed so i have to disagree with you.

I have had better results with back heat as far as temp control. Any difference with my animals...nope. Eating better or worse...nope. natural or not as far as i can tell they don't care, just do what works for you.

but what I think the op is talking about is no heat on the cage at all, which I talk to a person that does that and keep their room 80+. as already stated you might want to figure out the cost. but referring to the op again, i think they are doing it as reasons for fire safety

Well we all know thermostats can fail and flexwatt can have problems. but it is very rare. I ran a foot of 11 inch flex unregulated as a test, only got 150 degrees under a tub in my 80 degree room, not nearly hot enough to light anything on fire or melt it.....cause harm to an animal though, yes.

But looking at the other way, your thermostat on the room heater can also fail and so can that heater, nothing is 100% safe. the same event of failure we fear with flexwatt, the room heater might cause more damage since It would be effecting the entire collection.

so which risk is less?

To be more specific Tracy isn't using back heat either and only keeps her room at 81. I can keep mine there without a space heater so it would take the risk of fire way down. She even said they are doing better at that temp. Keep in mind that there are few more experienced than the Barkers.

Just giving my opinion on heat versus no heat, I feel that an external heat source is a must with my snakes who like it warmer than room temperature. I personally feel that if the temperatures are lower than they ought to be my snakes become more susceptible to illness. Not saying that if their temps aren't right they WILL come down with an illness, just feel that over time without heat they may catch something I don't want to have in my collection.

I suppose it's more of a precaution for my collection. I used to volunteer at a place that I noticed wouldn't use heat for some snakes like Ball pythons or Red tails for example. Over time some of those snakes came down with an RI, some more worse than others. Certain individuals would also stop eating. So that was the cause of the way I think when certain heat-loving snakes don't have any type of an external heat source.

I have a great deal of respect for the Barkers and the experience they bring. They are well respected in and out of the hobby most reciently being experts called on by USARK.

I also know they use the very best in controls and instrumentation. I am sure if she says 81 she means 81 correct. not 79-83 someplace. There is a high cost to get precision. Keeping a room at 82 perfectly is hard I would like to know what the exact range they have is. I have read lots of the comments they have made about the rising temps in the hobby Royals in particular. I believe them and I am sure they have it to work but I am also completely sure it is not as easy as it sounds.

Personally with a small collection I have each animal individually adjusted temp wise some have 88º hot spots and lower cool end temps others have higher based on how an individual acts and the shifts they make. All my animals use both hides typically 70%/30% splits. Although I trust the validity of the experience I am not sure it is prudent to suggest it across the board as signs of problems are not easy to spot for the inexperienced.

I'm not proposing keeping snakes at room temperature comfortable to humans, unless you really like it warm ;). In Pythons of the World Vol. II, Ball Pythons, the Barkers state this (bottom of first column on page 171):
"Most of the time, we keep our subadult and growing ball pythons at 80 to 82 degrees F without any supplemental heat. We raise all of our hatchlings in small cages without basking spots in a room that is 80 degrees F in the day and 78 degrees F at night." On the same page they state this: "When a snake is digesting a meal, it generates heat. Many keepers don't realize this, but in an enclosed area, a ball python that is digesting a good-sized meal can raise its body temperature at least 2 or 3 degrees F above ambient. We've seen several large ball pythons, each with a meal inside it, packed into an insulated shipping box that got so warm in the box from the heat generated by the snakes that they were severely stressed by the time they were unpacked."
There is a lot more but I don't feel comfortable giving all the information in the book as the Barkers put a ton of time into it and deserve to get paid for those wanting the information. I highly recommend getting it if you are interested in knowing more on the subject (and it covers a whole lot more information than temps - it is probably the most comprehensive book ever written on the species). Look, I'm not saying everything stops with the Barkers. Everybody is different and do what works best for you. The reason I'm throwing this out there is that maybe we do need to rethink things. Why are we risking fire as well as spiking our electricity (the latter as has been pointed out is for those of us with larger collections) if it isn't necessary? Not only that but maybe it isn't the best way to keep them afterall. The reason I bring up who stated this is I wanted it to be clear this isn't coming from an inexperienced keeper. The Barkers quite possibly have more experience in keeping and breeding pythons than anybody else.

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

I have a great deal of respect for the Barkers and the experience they bring. They are well respected in and out of the hobby most reciently being experts called on by USARK.

I also know they use the very best in controls and instrumentation. I am sure if she says 81 she means 81 correct. not 79-83 someplace. There is a high cost to get precision. Keeping a room at 82 perfectly is hard I would like to know what the exact range they have is. I have read lots of the comments they have made about the rising temps in the hobby Royals in particular. I believe them and I am sure they have it to work but I am also completely sure it is not as easy as it sounds.

Personally with a small collection I have each animal individually adjusted temp wise some have 88º hot spots and lower cool end temps others have higher based on how an individual acts and the shifts they make. All my animals use both hides typically 70%/30% splits. Although I trust the validity of the experience I am not sure it is prudent to suggest it across the board as signs of problems are not easy to spot for the inexperienced.

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Good points and I do agree with you. Not to be misunderstood, I'm simply stating that maybe we just need to re-examine things rather than just following the whole "80 on the cool side and 88 for the basking side" blindly. I definitely agree that formula is probably best for the beginner to avoid RI's, non-feeding snakes, etc. But for those of us that have a few years under our belts, maybe we need to look into this. I definitely do not plan to just suddenly drop my snakes temps. I'm thinking of racheting it down slowly and observing them closely for any signs of problems.

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Originally Posted by Hypnotic Exotic

I'm not proposing keeping snakes at room temperature comfortable to humans, unless you really like it warm ;).

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That's me, lol. Upper 70s, lower 80s is perfect for me. Frankly, it's also the needed minimum temps for a lot of reptiles. It's part of the reason why I'm not overly worried about my reptiles. Now, at the other house, my room was usually in the 50s during winter due to poor insulation. You can bet everyone had heat pads and heat lamps.

I started dropping the temps on my tstats last week and I'm currently trying to regulate my room to 83 or so. Once the hot spots are down to 83 the tstats are going into storage.

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Originally Posted by Rawbbeh

Being new to snakes but familiar with reptiles for years...I have never really been a fan of Belly heat myself.

In nature, the heat comes from above and warms the ground/surfaces that reptiles are on. While I do have a problem with heat lamps (ones that emit light), I do like heating systems like the Pro Heat that is a heat emitter. It can be regulated with a thermostat, and then for light in your enclosure, a simple softer non heat producing light source will do the trick.

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Originally Posted by Rawbbeh

I have had lizards (Primarily Bearded Dragons) and turtles. While my turtles I kept outside using natural sunlight for warmth and such. The bearded dragons I had in an enclosure inside. The earth's surface doesn't heat itself. The warmth of the ground on a hot day comes from the sunlight that bears down on it. Likewise. Under the tank heating is not "natural" while above heating is.

Any heat that is absorbed by the ground will lose its heat as it is covered. Take standing on a beach on a summer day. The sand burns your feet. But if you stand in that spot long enough, it loses it's heat and it is more comfortable to stand on. Likewise, a turtle basking on a rock...or an alligator on the shore of a river...

Hence why, I prefer personally, to use a heat emitter mounted in the top of my enclosures to replicate the way the sun heats the earth. UTH's I tend not to use for enclosures except for a temporary enclosure/small enclosure for a baby before it moves up to a more permanent place once it gets bigger.

Just my two cents...

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Your not getting it. The sun heats the objects on earth that most if not all reptiles will bask on. They will absorb heat from above and below. A UTH and any belly heat acts like a surface that was heated by the sun and emits heat for our reptiles to absorb.

I will continue to keep my racks dialed in at a 90 degree hot spot because it works for me. I don't have a snake room.

I think people are sometimes too quick to make changes just because a big breeder says something.

Just because something works for the barkers, doesn't mean it will work for the average Joe. I think people aren't considering a lot of the potential complications... Here are a few that the average Joe in the average house might experience...

1. Depending on a lot of different factors, the electricity required to heat a room can be WAY more then what it costs to power several large racks.
2. Depending on the kind of floor you have, Wall insulation, and ceiling insulation you could experience huge differences in temperature from tub to tub depending on the hight of each tub. My house for example has a floor crawl space with wood floors. The floor temp is easily 10 degrees lower then the ceiling.
3. depending on the room size and dimensions and the temperature of the rest of the house, and the size and type of the heater used you could experience huge differences in temperature from tub to tub depending on distance from the heater. for example if one tub is 5 feet away from heater and another is 10 feet away... They will both have different temperatures of probably at least a few degrees.
4. Sure 2 and 3 could possibly be addressed to a certain extent using fans to circulate the air but then you are spending even more electricity! And that would make the heater work even harder.

Obviously it can be done, and some do it... But I think it is not practical for the average Joe.