What cheap thermostat do you recommend?

I need a thermostat that is cheap but is good. I was going to buy the zilla temperature controller for my snake rack, but I dont know how to use it. Can someone tell me a good thermostat to use for snake racks and how to use it. P.s. wrote the same thread, but in the wrong forum topic.

Cheapest Id buy is a Ranco, and a Double Ranco at that.

Cheap & thermostat is a 4 letter word around these parts..

I used a alife about 10yrs ago, but first thing I did when I got back into keeping bp's this year was buy a herpstat. Last thing I want to worry about is the thermostat failing..

The alife never failed me, still have it to this day. I use it now for my seedling heat mats to control them. But investing the amount of money Ive spent this year I wanted the peace of mind.

If I had to I would use the alife again for a short period of time.

Here's a link to it at beanfarm- http://beanfarm.com/product_info.php...oducts_id=5685.

Pick up a johnsons controls thermostat from reptile basics. They are like 80 bucks and work great. If you care about your snakes i wouldnt cheap out in that dept. I have 8 johnsons and 7 helix and they both work just as well the only difference is my helix are set up with night drop. You can get the johnsons with night drop though

Ya a thermostat is not the area to be cheap. Spend the money and get a good one. I use a helix and a herpstat and both are good. If u get a cheap one it could burn your snakes or not provide heat and cause digestion issues or cause them to become sick

just ordered this one. read some of the reviews on there http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-MTPR...5665841&sr=8-1 :gj:

good luck with that

i wouldnt trust that thing. your trusting the health and life of your snake to a 26 dollar piece of plastic. if that thing fails, and prolly will, then your going to be spending more in vet bills than it would cost for a good thermostat. good luck. i hope it works for you

i don't recommend cheap thermostats. period.

While I would normally agree with all of the above posters about thermostats, my Hydrofarm thermo stats have been fantastic, and I've been using them for a full year straight!

Yeah, they definitely waver in temperature a bit, but not more than 2 or three degrees in either direction! I have four of them and they are fantastic!

Good luck!
Fatal

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Originally Posted by Tree

just ordered this one. read some of the reviews on there http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-MTPR...5665841&sr=8-1 :gj:

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I've been using this for 5 months now I haven't had any troubles works great for the price and easy too use... If your looking at something under the $50 range get this you won't regret it I know i haven't yet

I know there is a lot of bashing on the Hydrofarm, and I do understand it, it probably doesn't even come close to a real thermostat; HOWEVER, I think that they do more than well for what they cost... I can't really vouch for them since i have had mine for just a week, but atleast it hasn't gone crazy on me...

Keywords i keep hearing about Hydrofarms is , YET,AT LEAST,WEEKS,MONTHS,VARYING DEGREES,BUT.

Thoses that use it, may get a good unit but these were designed cheap for the use of gardening. They were designed for seasonal use and not 24/7 365 use. They most likely fail in the ON position where your snakes will be fried. I Just couldnt trust them with larger collections that have Thousands invested. If you cant afford a good thermostat, Sell something to get the funds.

When buying the better thermostats, their programed to fail in OFF position. Always remember, your better off with a snake that got cold rather HOT and suffer problems from it.

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Originally Posted by snake lab

good luck with that

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Originally Posted by mpkeelee

i wouldnt trust that thing. your trusting the health and life of your snake to a 26 dollar piece of plastic. if that thing fails, and prolly will, then your going to be spending more in vet bills than it would cost for a good thermostat. good luck. i hope it works for you

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Originally Posted by decensored

i don't recommend cheap thermostats. period.

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The hydrofarm works great, for $28 you can't beat it! I have 4 and have not had 1 problem, I only wish it was a proportional.

Yeah I'm sure everyone would love to own a herpstat, but it is still cost prohibitive for some.

I'm going to go against the grain here.

I use Ranco or Johnsons for the most part, I don't find the herpstats or helix thermostats worth the money. I have been using a number of different thermostats through out the almost 7 years of keeping snakes to find what works for me. I also use the A-life and Zoo-Med repti-temp thermostats. I bought the zoo-med as my first one 7 years ago. Today I use it to control my ambient temps on one of my racks. I have had zero issues with temperature control.

With all of the thermostats mentioned above I think it is more important to have a quality temp gun that you can check your hot and cool spots every other day if not daily. Every thermostat can malfunction no matter how much money you spend on it.

As others have stated I wouldn't recommend a "cheap" thermostat either. It is one of the few things that can cause alot of problems rather quickly if something goes wrong. Especially if as RichsBallPythons stated it fails in the on position!
We just picked up the Herpstat 4 for our racks and highly recommend it. It's very user friendly and though it is alittle expensive up front the fact that it will control 3 racks and an incubator for us actually makes it less expensive than individual thermostats for each unit. GL

As Rich stated "it most likely will fail in the on position", I would like to see something a little more concrete than that, the Hydrofarm is designed not to exceed 108*.

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Originally Posted by Tree

just ordered this one. read some of the reviews on there http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-MTPR...5665841&sr=8-1 :gj:

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I have 5 of them running for over a year with no problems either. Of course I have my Herpstats as well.

Thanks for posting this question. I've been investigating thermostats for my rack - which isn't housing anyone yet - and I was going to post a similar question to find out what everyone preferred.

I love how people keep saying "I wouldn't trust the Hydrofarm", yet no one has posted proof that they are prone to failure.

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Originally Posted by knox

I love how people keep saying "I wouldn't trust the Hydrofarm", yet no one has posted proof that they are prone to failure.

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Very true, everyone that says "do not use Hydrofarm" has not used one.
people that have used them seem to like them.

I agree most of the cheap thermostats out there are probably junk, but this one seems to be a winner.

I was looking to get a thermostat myself and asked around. this was the one, out of the recommendations, that I am going to use.

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Originally Posted by Tree

Very true, everyone that says "do not use Hydrofarm" has not used one.
people that have used them seem to like them.

I agree most of the cheap thermostats out there are probably junk, but this one seems to be a winner.

I was looking to get a thermostat myself and asked around. this was the one, out of the recommendations, that I am going to use.

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The ones saying not to use one, are the same ones that have seen similar ones like the alife fail and kill entire racks worth of snakes... And wont skimp out on good prodcut.

Why spend good money on snakes and stick them on cheap thermostats? People like to cut corners but that's one of the wrong places to do it IMO. Just my $.02....

Regards,

B

It seems that people are confusing cheap with inexpensive, like I said before most would love to own a herpstat. I look at it this way, the hydrofarm was not produced for reptile husbandry, but it does the same thing as ranco, johnsons, etc.

Just like when the drug Sildenafil was produced and studied for the use of hypertension & angina, some side effects were noted in the test cases, now that drug is marketed as viagra.

I feel that with the high priced controllers, it's supply & demand, and we will probably see some competitive pricing soon, with new ones coming on the market.

Thought I'd share this emai

Message body

Lisa,

Every time I've heard of or seen one of these failing, it fails in the off position, but I guess there is the small possibility that it could leave the heat mat on...

Regards,

Nicholas Rossi
Technical Support
Hydrofarm-West

I paid out a little more and went with the herpstat because this statement rang true for me:

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Originally Posted by Simple Man

Why spend good money on snakes and stick them on cheap thermostats?

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Of course there are no guarantees with anything electronic. But I kinda equated it to buying a $1000 dog, and using shoe laces as a leash. Will it work? Yeah - it may even last a while. But a more expensive, heavy duty leash will probably work better and last longer.

Cheap thermostats = dead snakes. There are lots of areas to save money, but don't skimp on a thermostat. It literally controls the life of your snake.

So, is it price alone that makes the other on/off thermostats better?

Has anyone compared the components of the Hydrofarm to the more expensive on/off?

I am not here to "champion" the Hydrofarm. I have used it with success. My favorite thermostat, though, is the Herpstat. I have owned 3 of them, but sold them along with the racks they controlled.

The thing I don't want to see is an emotional response to any question. If the components of the Hydrofarm are truly inferior, that is one thing. If they are on par with the more expensive thermostats, yet give the SENSE of being inferior because of price alone, that is something else altogether.

I don't know what components are used, I am just throwing this out for discussion. I would feel cheated if, after all this time, the same electronics were used in all of these thermostats and we have all been hosed.

I have quite extensively tested 3 hydrofarm T-stats. I do some consulting work and part of that is to evaluate products for adapting for other uses.

most of that study is under anon-disclosure doc. but generally it works ok. It is a basic on and off type it has all the pit falls of that type (they typically like warmer rooms and heavier or non direct heating.) Generally it could be made to work quite well in a rack. longevity remains to be seen.

The biggest issue is the probe. The probe is metal clad and so to respond to changes not really a problem in a rack as temp shift isn't too much of a problem most keep racks in warm rooms (77+) so this isn't an issue (tubs in shifting rooms it could be.) the bigger issues are the off and on points and the reading of the probe. They seem to shut down 2ºF over the set point and 3 under it. (the tested units are 'new and improved' models) The real issue is the unit is very poor accuracy the read out it is is just wrong. The 3 better accuracy versions I have the best is over a degree high and the worst is 3. The read out cannot be trusted.

If you are using a indirect heat source and set up this does not matter anyway but if you expect the probe to be correct you might be unpleasantly surprised.

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Thanks, Kite!

Personally with a rack i think I'd rather see a proportional t-stat and a on/off back up as a first choice but a hydrofarm and hydrofarm back up beats a ranco or Johnson as a single unit in my mind anyway. I might even say a dual on/off is as good or better than a single proportional unit in this case with a rack.

A thermostat is only as good as the security of the probe, no matter whom makes it. A fail safe or back up protects against a moved probe.

There was a post a while ago about catching a probe wire and pulling it free with a door I think all the snakes died but one whom had nerve damage but at last I heard was recovering. Sad and tragic but a simple fail safe would have prevented that accident where a herpstat or anything else would not have done so.

I personally will never use a thermostat with out a fail safe second unit. I believe that accidents can and will happen it is not an 'IF' but 'WHEN' and a probe caught by something (like a tub sliding over it) is a simple easy to make accident that can carry a very large cost.

I feel that hydrofarms make very very good back up t-stats, cheap and simple they will kill the power to a runaway unit for what ever reason. The chances of two units failing at the same time both in the on position is very very very low.

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

I personally will never use a thermostat with out a fail safe second unit. I believe that accidents can and will happen it is not an 'IF' but 'WHEN' and a probe caught by something (like a tub sliding over it) is a simple easy to make accident that can carry a very large cost.

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I 2nd this. Several years ago I accidentally dislodged my probe on my Herpstat on a rack and didn't realize it at the time. The probe was no longer above the heat source and was dangling behind the rack. It happened at night when I was checking water/spot cleaning, etc. I woke up the next morning and noticed all of my snakes pressed towards the front of their tubs that were super humid.

The temp inside the tubs was over 110º!!! The t-stat wasn't in contact with the heat so it thought the temp was much too low and had the heat element at full blast. At first I thought I had a malfunction, but finally figured out what had happened. Luckily none of my snakes were killed or injured in any way and all turned out just fine. But every since I make it a point to double check the probe and its security and I also run a back up on/off t-stat with its probe in a different place. The back up is set higher than the regular one, so the only time it will ever go off is if there is a malfunction.

$200 in a Herpstat and Johnson t-stat is nothing if it keeps thousands of dollars worth of snakes alive.

Not to hijack this thread but has anyone been able to find a Hydrofarm thermostat at a retail store? I've only been able to find them on Amazon.com - Which really, is fine, I can order one through them, but I'd really like to be able to just go out and get one ASAP if I can...I just can't seem to find them for sale anywhere.

I would definitely love to have one of the more expensive t-stats at some point, but for the moment, I have a hydrofarm.
It was what I could get quickly when I got my snake way ahead of time(like, 5 months ahead of time) and I couldn't afford a porportional one. I like my hydrofarm. I trust it.
It may be inexpesnive, but it does not seem like a 'cheap' unit.
It does what I need it to.

Oh, and if I might add, I've not seen any threads about hydrofarms failing, but I have seen several threads about herpstats failing.
If anyone has had a hydrofarm fail on them, I'd like to hear from them. :)
And if I had thousands of dollars worth of snakes, I would definitely get a good proportional t-stat instead of a $30 on/off one.
But I trust my hydrofarm. I would hate it if something happened to my snake since she is pricless to me, even though I only paid $20 for her, she's worth more than that. :3 I would be heart broken if the t-stat failed.
But I've heard pretty much nothing but good things about the hydrofarm. I've not seen anyone say that they got it and it failed on them.

It's from what I hear, a LOT Better than the ones you can buy for 50-60$$ at the petstore. I wouldn't buy a thermostat from a petstore anyway.
Many users on BP.net have it and like it. It works for me, and for them.

I've heard nothing but good things about the Hydrofarm thermostats.

They do seem ok other than when it is set at 90 it delivers something else. Check it with a trusted thermometer and they seem ok.

I would recommend not getting Hydrofarm. I've only used it for a month or so and every time I go to read my temperatures on the heat mats when the thermostat is set at 90 the temps are in the high 100's. I have to constantly change the positions of my mats so my snakes don't burn themselves.

I use a Hydrofarm on a small qt rack. I've been using it for a few months and have had no issues. Other than what kite said. It does tend to be a bit off with temp readout. I do keep 2 digital thermometers in the same rack as a back up. Usually the therms are about 2 degrees off of the tstat read out. But it works.

My question though for those of you that have a back up tstat. How do you set one up? I would like to get back ups in place for my racks but I can't seem to wrap my brain around hooking a second up to the heat. Its probably a really silly question.


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I have a big apple herp one cost me like 45$ looking back regret buying it. (Not cause it is bad) I am buying a proportional one. I would recommend one to you also. Either Hepstat or johnsans Idk which one I am getting yet.

http://images9.fotki.com/v114/photos...drawing-vi.jpgHosted on Fotki

http://spyderrobotics.com/home/suppo...edocument.html

I think that will cover it for a failsafe it is easy very very easy.

The Hydrofarms are fine just know what the actual set point is. I am running 3 of them now and they are all within the +/- 2 degree mark. For back up I wired in a dimmer on each setup and set it a few degrees higher than tstat needs to be. Yes by using a dimmer I realize I am just reducing power to heat but I am still able to maintain temps very well. It does not matter what kind of thermostat you are using, they all can and will fail. After all they are electronic.

ok in the market there are various types of thermostates are available. you can buy anyone according to your budget