What else can I do to increase tank heat?

I recently adopted a adult ball python male. He is 4 years old and about 4 ft long. I'm keeping him in the 30 gallon glass reptile tank which he has lived in for the past 3 years. It has aspen substrate.

Originally I was having trouble maintaining humidity in his tank as I would spray the substrate to bring it up to around 60% and within minutes the humidity would be back down to 40% as it is quite dry here. I solved this issue by getting a regular humiafier for my room and placing near his tank.

The problem I am having now is keeping the tank warm enough. Right now the temperature is reading 75° in what is supposed to be the warm spot. Which is much too cold.

Now part of this may be because my thermometer has no probe on it and I have placed it near the top of the tank so it might not be reading the warmest part of the tank.

I am using a heat coil underneath the tank on the warm side and a heat bulb above the tank on the warm side as well. The bulb seams to put out a great deal of heat. But the temperature reading not seem to be adequate, which is quite odd as his previous owners were using the same equipment and said that it was sufficient to keep his tank warm.

He has also been hanging out on the cold side of his tank the past couple of days so I'm really worried that he is not warm enough.

What can I do in order to warm the tank further? My best thought is to put an under tank mat on the bottom of the tank and maybe tape the coil to the outside of the glass? But I'm not sure if this is the best solution, I've found plenty of advice online on what to use to set up tank heat but nothing on what to do if you currently heat setup is inadequate. Any advise would be aprecated.

Your thermometer that is up on the side of the tank is not reading the temperature of the hot spot at all. You need to get a way to determine what temperature your snake is actually coming into contact with (thermometer with a probe, infrared thermometer, etc). You're basically saying that you've turned the oven on, but because you can put your hand on the top of the stove without burning it, the inside of the oven isn't hot enough.

I would strongly advise against adding any additional things to heat your tank until you know exactly what your hot spot temperatures actually are.

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Originally Posted by flyingmongoose

He has also been hanging out on the cold side of his tank the past couple of days so I'm really worried that he is not warm enough.
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What can I do in order to warm the tank further?

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If he's hanging out on the cold side, I'm not sure you need to heat the tank further. The opposite may be true.


Like previously said you need to get something to measure the actual temp on the ground before you increase the heat more.

What is this heat coil you speak of? I'm not clear what it is but I'm gonna say its a safe bet it should not be inside the tank.

A thermometer at the top of the tank is useless. It needs to be a few inches at most from the tank floor. You need to track the temps where the snake is. You should also get a probed thermometer or an IR temp gun to find the hotspot temp.

I'm guessing but with a heat coil and a bulb on the hot side the surface temp is way to hot which is why your snake is staying on the cool side.

Move the thermometer and get another device to measure the hotspot so we can help you better.

As for now I would remove the heat coil and only use the lamp. A lamp alone can provide a warm hide and good ambient temps. A uth is great but should only be used correctly with a tstat. And you should only use a correct uth.

There are other things we can do to insulate the tank and save heat and humidity but we need to know the actually numbers first.

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Originally Posted by KMG

What is this heat coil you speak of? I'm not clear what it is but I'm gonna say its a safe bet it should not be inside the tank.

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It's not in the tank it's under it. The tank is on my dresser and the heat coil is in the air gap between the tank and my dresser. The tank hangs out about an inch so there is ventilation for the heat source.

It's a flexible silicone coated wire that heats up when plugged in. It does not seam to get super hot. I can comfortably hold it without being burned.
There is probably about a half inch of clearance between the bottom of the tank and the coil.

And yes I'm going to get a digital temperature and humidity probe as soon as I get home from work and I'll let everyone know what the accurate numbers are.

Thank you for your help

Keep in mind that what feels warm to us can be hot to them. I would turn it off for now until you know what it is actually running at.

Update: I got a thermometer with a probe and put the probe right in the warm spot. Right now I'm getting a reading of 80.6° in the warm spot and 71.4 in the cool side.

Where did you put the probe and how long did you leave it there to get your reading?

Probe is on the bottom of the tank on top of the substrate and about 2 inches from the side of the tank. I have left it there for a half hour and it has fluctuated from between 80.6 and 77.5 during that time.

What is the temperature of the probe if you put it directly against the glass buried below the substrate? Also, how deep is the substrate and what are you using?