First Day - Arboreal Hide?

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Originally Posted by BPGuy

Very cool idea! I was trying to figure out a way to get some red light in the T8 for some night-time viewing. I very much like your idea of using the LED strip lighting and the remote is great. I think I saw a kit like that at Costco. Is that where you purchased the flexible LED strip?

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Costco happens to be where I picked that up.

Also I cut and smoothed the ring off the top of the dome. It was like a ring of color daring me to remove it. Just make sure you keep a plug link outside the dome, test it, then glue it shut. I keep the transformer on the back of the cage and the infrared eye under my thermostat, simple.

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Originally Posted by arialmt

Costco happens to be where I picked that up.

Also I cut and smoothed the ring off the top of the dome. It was like a ring of color daring me to remove it. Just make sure you keep a plug link outside the dome, test it, then glue it shut. I keep the transformer on the back of the cage and the infrared eye under my thermostat, simple.

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LOL. Since my last post (but before seeing yours), my wife ended up in Costco so I asked her to look to see if she saw the lights. She did. $29.99 so I asked her to pick them up for me. I'm actually hoping to finish assembling my T8 tonight (still have to fasten down the thermometers, screw on the top, add the glass doors, and add the Flexwatt and Herpstat). I'll now include add the LED strip lights to my to-do list. :) Thanks again for the great idea!

Update 1: I added a few pages of crumpled up newspaper to her home after seeing her flying high again while the lights were off this morning. Turns out she was likely less-than-thrilled with her new spacious mansion and not quite ready for her own episode of Cribs. After cluttering it up a bit, she came down on her own and settled in to her hot side hide and has been happy ever since.

Update 2: So happy, actually, that she took her first meal in my care. She hadn't had a meal since 04/12, so I decided to not wait and see how she'd do. She had no problems at all with a 20g live rat fuzzy. I'm going to be switching over to f/t shortly, but I didn't want a meal refusal during the first few feedings to be due to a new way it was being offered.

Thanks for your help and suggestions, everyone!

Those LED lights from Costco are awesome! They come in two-foot sections (four are included in the package from Costco). I used two of the sections and ran them straight across the top of my T8 (which is slightly less than 24 inches light inside the cage). I used the adhesive on the back of the strips to attach them to the top of my T8 right behind the fluorescent lights (in hindsight, I would have been better off mounting them in front of the fluorescent tubes because the tubes shield the light a bit). Just in case the adhesive ever gives out, I screwed some metal brackets (the type used to hold mirrors in place) over the LED light strips in various places. My 11 year-old son had the great idea of putting the LED control box in the empty spot in the fluorescent light that is between the light and the top of the T8 (the infrared sensor tangles out). I'll try to post some photos later this week so you all can see what I did. The light strip is working great to provide us with some night-time viewing of the BPs. Thanks for tip, arialmt!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BPGuy

Those LED lights from Costco are awesome! They come in two-foot sections (four are included in the package from Costco). I used two of the sections and ran them straight across the top of my T8 (which is slightly less than 24 inches light inside the cage). I used the adhesive on the back of the strips to attach them to the top of my T8 right behind the fluorescent lights (in hindsight, I would have been better off mounting them in front of the fluorescent tubes because the tubes shield the light a bit). Just in case the adhesive ever gives out, I screwed some metal brackets (the type used to hold mirrors in place) over the LED light strips in various places. My 11 year-old son had the great idea of putting the LED control box in the empty spot in the fluorescent light that is between the light and the top of the T8 (the infrared sensor tangles out). I'll try to post some photos later this week so you all can see what I did. The light strip is working great to provide us with some night-time viewing of the BPs. Thanks for tip, arialmt!

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Just trying to picture how you did this in my mind... The LED strips are mounted with adhesive inside the plastic cover for the fluorescent lights from AP? I might need to look into doing this. I see a more stable temperature during the time that the fluorescent lights are off than when they are on during the day. It's not a swing that I'm terribly concerned about, but the more stability I can introduce into my enclosures, the happier both myself and my animals will be. Thanks for your clarification in advance!

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Originally Posted by Eric Alan

Just trying to picture how you did this in my mind... The LED strips are mounted with adhesive inside the plastic cover for the fluorescent lights from AP? I might need to look into doing this. I see a more stable temperature during the time that the fluorescent lights are off than when they are on during the day. It's not a swing that I'm terribly concerned about, but the more stability I can introduce into my enclosures, the happier both myself and my animals will be. Thanks for your clarification in advance!

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I took some photos with my digital camera, which is at home. I'm at work right now, but will try to post some photos later (probably later in the week, not tonight) so you can see exactly what I did. In the meantime, let me try to explain it. The LED light strips have an adhesive on the back of the strip. I used the adhesive to attach to the strips to the ceiling (interior top) of the T8 (and then used some metal strips that I screwed into the ceiling of the T8 just in case the adhesive stops working). I mounted the strip to the portion of the ceiling that is between the back of the fluorescent lights and the back wall of the T8. Thus, when you are looking at the cage from the front (through the glass doors), you see the fluourescent light fixtures but not the LED light strips, which are positioned so they shine down from the ceiling of the cage to the bottom of the cage.

The LED light strips (which are about 1/4" wide and 1/8" high by 24" per strip) connect to a small control box that is maybe 2"x3"x2" (my rough estimate of dimensions). The a power adapter blugs into the control box. The control box also has a thin cord that is maybe 4" long. At that end of that cord is an IR receiver, which receives a signal from the remote control. The fluorescent fixtures that are sold by Animal Plastics have a dead (hollow) spot in the back on the left side of each light fixture. When the fluorescent fixtures are shipped, the AC power cords are stored in that dead space. Instead of using that dead space to store the extra length of AC cord for the fluorescent fixture, I placed the LED light control box in the dead space and then just routed the round power cord and the flat IR receiver cord out of a little notch in the flourescent fixture case that would be used to route the fixture's AC cord if you were mounting the fluorescent fixture under, say, a kitchen cabinet and running the cord outside the fluorescent fixture (when you order the fluorescent fixture from AP, they drill holes in the top part of the T8 and the fluorescent light's cord is run through that hole instead from the side of the fixture).

I hope this better helps you visualize what I did with the LED lights. Like I said, I'll post some photos when I can. In fact, my plan was to post a bunch of photos in the T8 set-up thread because I photographed every single step of the T8 setup, from the unboxing until the entire unit was set-pu and running.

BTW, the LED lights generate no discernable heat at all. Before installing them in the T8, I left them on all night long (a good 8 hours, if not longer) and then touched them in the morning. They felt like room temperature. They can generate a multitude of colors so, for example, during the daytime you can use a white light and then switch to red at night.