I bought some styro foam and put it around three sides of my tank.
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01-21-2012, 08:01 PM
WifeOfSlasher
Here's what we do and have been running pretty darn consistent temps since the addition of our UTHs without all of the other stuff.
Email Rich at Reptile Basics with the tank dimensions. He'll tell you the proper sized UTH. We have 11x11 ultratherms for our 20g tanks. GET A THERMOSTAT!!! Our hyrdrofarms are set at 90 degrees. We attached these with aluminum tape and covered the entire bottom of the UTH with the tape so that the heat would be reflected back into the tank instead of heating the underside of the tank. We double check all of our temps with a laser thermometer just to be sure.
Our room temps before the addition of two snakes sat at 72 degrees.
Okay, we have medium (?) light hoods. They are about the same width as the top of our tanks with 75 watt RED bulbs. Seriously, red is better and don't run as hot to put out the same heat in the tank. Ours are on dimmers so we could dial in our temps.
NOW... cover the open portion of the screened top with a damp hand towel folded in half. We change the towel every other day and re-dampen with hot water every morning.
With these simple things our temps and humidity has been pretty damn consistent with paper towel substrate.
01-21-2012, 08:02 PM
WifeOfSlasher
Oh. Always attach the UTH to the underside of the tank. Don't put it on the inside.
01-21-2012, 08:14 PM
WifeOfSlasher
And a thermostat trick. Be sure that the probe is located under where your hot side hide is. The thermostat will switch off the pad from being exposed to the basking temps from the light and thus giving you a bit of trouble. On top of the hide in our tanks is that higher temp basking spot that you read about.
01-21-2012, 08:46 PM
warlord
Re: Keep heat in
thanks for the info...where did you get your thermostat? i need a better 1 but i cant spend a whole bunch of oney on it
With the two cheaper ones they default to on if something goes wrong. I'd continue to use your cheaper thermostat as a backup just in case.
01-21-2012, 10:30 PM
RestlessRobie
Re: Keep heat in
OOOOO I really need to make a post for a sticky on this one :)
So here is what I did and it works great.
First I covered 3 sides of the tank with aquarium background (the only good item I have found from Petsmart) just to make it look nicer for me to look at.
Second I took some cardboard and cut it to fit the 3 covered sides. Then I taped one side of the cardboard with foil tape to reflect heat back into the tank and taped the cardboard to the 3 coverd sides of the tank as seen below.
As for the screen top I purchased a peice of plexi from HomeDepot and cut it to fit just inside the slider top for my tank. Drilled a few holes in it for ventilation and one large hole for the CHE. Taped a portion of it with foil tape and left the back untaped for the tank light. I do like to see my snake when she is out :)
Heat is supplied from a 60W CHE and Flexwatt 11 taped to the bottom. The CHE is set at about 50% on a lamp dimmer from HomeDepot (plan to get a dual T-stat for it in the future) The Flexwatt is set on a Vivarium VE 300 T-stat set to 96F. This keep my hot spot at 91f and ambient at 78-81 as room temps fluctuate a little. My Snake seems to love it she just got a great checkup from the vet and is eating like a pig. Hasnt refused a meal yet. As you can see in the photo below room temp was about 68f and tank temps were exactly what I wanted them to be :) Hope this helps out and feel free to ask me any questions you might have.
