Frustrated..I need help...

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Originally Posted by Shadow

I moved my lamp and added the heat mat on back and my temps dropped. I went out to see if I could find another heat mat or t-stat or r-stat or even a good lamp dimmer of the cool side, I found mats but nothing else. I found a couple lamp dimmers but they only had like on-dim-off and nightlight-med.-regular-off. So I'm still stuck. I need to win the lottery, then I'd send my butler to fetch these things, lol.

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Here is an idea. It is winter now. By the time your snake gets big enough to need a 20 long tank it will be next winter. I would suggest that you get a small tub with lid. You will be able to control the temps and humidity throughout the whole winter with what you have now.

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I have the oil filled heater + some others. They all work great just keep them away from things that easily catch fire and you should be fine. As far as the humidity goes I tried something that seems to work for me. I covered about 70% of the top with wet and warm paper towels (keep away from the light source if you use one). Then I cover that with something hard like plastic or w/e. It seems to keep humidity well and all I have to do is spray water on the paper towels a couple times a day or until they dry out then replace when needed.

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I'd going to check a couple more pet stores for some kind of t-sstat and then I'll check into the heaters. I'll also keep them in mind if my collection grows because I have a room that I could turn into a herp room.

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Here is an idea. It is winter now. By the time your snake gets big enough to need a 20 long tank it will be next winter. I would suggest that you get a small tub with lid. You will be able to control the temps and humidity throughout the whole winter with what you have now.Yesterday 06:42 PM

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I was thinking about that and I might have to do that if nothing else works.

The oil filled/electric heater I use to bump the ambients in our snake room has two switches...one is 900 watts, the other is 600 watts...so I can use one or the other (but not both) to get the temps I want without tripping fuses. It's from WalMart and retails for just under $40.00.

Personally I'd give up on the 20 long glass tank and go right to a tub at least for this winter. Why continue to fuss with it when you can have a tub setup, running perfectly and a snake settling in with barely any expense or time involved. You should be able to find an appropriate Sterlite, Rubbermaid or even better an Iris brand at most any store for well under $10.00 (Iris are harder to find...I get mine from Office Max...slightly more costly but a far superior quality). With the smaller tub, a few vents holes I bet your loss of heat and humidity issues will disappear in no time.

With tubs you just have to make sure you melt or drill in vent holes and secure the lid if it has any give (most do and anything over 1/8 inch can allow your snake to escape). Large black binder clips are great for this and cheap as dirt.

Easy as pie young BP setup....runs like a dream...takes no time at all to organize and cleaning is simple as it can be....the snakes love it, I love it....it's all good! :)

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...MuirnesTub.jpg

I haven't had time today to go out and buy anything yet. I still wanted to go over the substrate thing, because no matter what I do it is going to be a problem. I've found with paper towels that not only do they block 6-7 degrees of heat they were building heat underneath slowly. It was good for the cold side warming it up, but was reaching up to a deadly 101* under the paper towel on the warm side (which quickly dropped back to 94 degrees after removing the papertowel for a minute) . I tested this several times with the same result. I'm trying regular writing paper with lots of little slits and so far I am getting better results about a 2-4 degree differences below and above. I'm not sure how absorbent It'd be though. I can't use newpaper because no one on this street gets a paper delivered (our newspaper are not great obviously) so I have none. So I'm going to have to have a trail and eror session to fix this, but I'm imagining thin substrate with lots of ventilation will have to be the way to go. That or really heavy substrat a bp could not move and I high temp underneath. What a pain. Does anyone else have this problem or am I just that kind of unlucky person?
Maybe I'm just going overboard, I temp test ever inch (just about) of the cage floor and because flukers heat mats have to be taped on in is tighter against the glass in some places more than other so I get slightly different temos in the different spots. If I had a thermometer I would not notice this at all because I'd get one read out on one side and one on the otehr and go by that. If an ich or so is too hot (lets say 96*F) but the area around it is not is it ok? Should I stop being such a perfectionist?

Well you can get too fixated LOL. If you're concerned about this try grabbing a bag of fine aspen from WalMart. It's about $3.99 and is very compressed so one small bag lasts a long time with only one snake. Once in awhile just finger fluff the aspen (make it a part of your cleaning routine) as it does tend to compress inside the hides where the heavy bodied BP is laying on it most often. Fluffing it up lets heat come through more efficiently. If your BP has two appropriate and identical hides it's not likely it will burrow in the aspen (at least none of mine ever did it much when I used aspen). Just put a nice layer down, not overly deep but just deep enough to provide nice cover and comfort for the snake but not 8 inches deep or anything like that.

Ok, I was brainstorming all day and I think I came up with a good solution. I put a second heat mat (that will have to be controlled by a Rheostat for now) under the side with the lamp. I'll drop the heat of the other side until both sides are arounf 80-85 on top of the paper towels and no more than 94 under. Then I attached the heat lamp to another Rheostat and will use it to create the actual basking spot of 90-94. That way heat can not build up under the paper towel. So far so good with this techniqe.:D