Re: How to get the heat up?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jus1More
It's the type of heat mat you are using (Ultratherm). Those mats do not put out enough heat. When I first got into reptiles I did a search on what type of UTH to use. Came across Ultratherm and thought okay... but when I set it up it wasn't providing heat temps where I needed them. Thats exactly what happen it never seem to get over 85 degrees. Maybe it's just a thing with these heat mats but not my cup of tea!!
I personally swear by Ultratherms because you can move them around and they aren't ruined when you want to move them to another enclosure or switch the decor etc.
They aren't hot plates like the zoomed sticky ones though so you have to do things a bit differently if you want them to work out for you.
The key with using them properly in my experience is to use a larger mat than you would think you'd need, for a 20 gallon for example I have one of these mats that is basically covering just close to half of the enclosure and my thermostat set to around 82-83 degrees F giving a gradient of 78-84 degrees F from where there is no heat element to over the heat pad. I don't use hotspots however so keep that in mind if it's something that you desire.
I disagree that heat pads are useless for helping with ambient temperatures, particularly in an enclosure like an AP. I've had pretty good success with them in screen top enclosures as well as long as your room wide ambient temps aren't lower than 72 very often, however I don't ever use air conditioning so that's not something I have to compete with when it comes to keeping temps up so keep that in mind if your house is typically colder. I only had to switch to CHE when I started using 5-6 inch deep soil substrates for my bioactive setups which really renders a heatmat useless.
