Went up to visit Kara at NERD to get a snake and setup, have major questions.

is your probe inside the encloure or is it underneath where the flex is?


with larger enclosures, the probe pretty much HAS to be inside the enclosure because the flex heats up to the programmed temp and it isn't enough to keep the inside of the enclosure heated. If you think of it in terms of heat FLOW, the large enclosure has more heat losses and therefore will be difficult to control if the probe is underneath where heat losses/flow are pretty small because it's all pancaked together.

if your probe is in fact in the enclosure but under the substrate you could try moving it on top of the substrate. If that doesn't work then you're gonna need some supplemental heat.

Insulation WILL HELP! insulation reduces the heat flowing out of the enclosure so it will build up nicely AND save you energy too.
Insulating the top and bottom would be great. I did the top, bottom, back, and sides and it made a huge difference! I used 2" thick pink foam insulation sheets and covered them with Contac paper to make it look less ghetto.

Hey Fish,

Things are looking good, well better atleast!

I spoke with Kara on my lunch break and she was a huge help. As stated before at first I had the probe inside the enclosure, the first night it read 97 right before I went to bed. The next morning a couple forum members had responded to this thread telling me to never keep the thermostat probe inside the enclosure incase the water dish ever spilled or what not. They recomended I tape it to the heatpad underneath the enclosure. When I did that I could barely get the temp over 80. So then I switched it back inside the enclosure and taped it to the inside bottom underneath my boys hide. Then I took my thermometer probe and left it on top of the substrate under the hide which was about 1.5" of cypress mulch. After talking to Kara she recomended I put the thermostat probe on the bottom of the enclosure underneath the cypress next to the thermostat probe because she thought the temp would be much higher than what the thermometer was reading. After doing that about a minute ago (ran in the door from work and went right for the enclosure :D ) I got the following reading

Hot side 100.3 :eek: and here I was trying to get it up to atleast 90!

Ambient temp in the cage is 78.8 and humidity is at 71%

I think I am going to need to possibly use your insulation method to keep my ambient temps up.

All I can say is that I am super excited, last night I was in a state of depression because I was thinking it just wasnt going to happen. Now I can begin to get excited again about picking up my snake this coming Saturday. It was hard to be excited about something I wasn't sure was going to work out, now I can see the light.

Thanks you so much Fish and everyone else for taking the time to help me out on this. I am an animal freak through and through and I wouldnt even think about bringing an animal home if I couldnt provide it with what it needed. A few weeks ago I bought a beta fish for my 18 month old son and it died 4 days later and I was seriously bummed, I can't imagine of something happened to an otherwise healthy BP.

I am an illustrator and I am going to do a nice BP illustration for Kara just as a thanks for her help. She is taking me and my family on another tour when i pick up the snake, can't wait!

~Jason