I got some interesting/contradicting advice today

I scored some vision cages from a private seller yesterday for a steal, I had planned on purchasing some Animal Plastics cages, but this deal was just too good to pass up. I went to my local reptile shop (a very reputable shop) today to pick up some heat pads and look at a proportional thermostat. I was looking at the VE-200, I went to the front counter to as some questions and they asked me what I was keeping that I needed a thermostat for. I was kind of puzzled and said that I had just picked up a vision model #322 that I wanted to move my corn into and was looking at upgrading from my hydrofarm on/off thermostat to regulate the heat pad. They told me that with vision cages especially one that size (3x2x2) that it would be a waste to regulate it because it won't get hot enough to burn the animal and the animal can thermo-regulate itself. They house all their animals in vision cages and said none of them are regulated and the heat pads are plugged directly into the wall. I talked to two different employees that I have seen there multiple times before so I know they aren't new, and both said the same thing. I looked at their cages and they were right none of them were plugged into thermostats. This info contradicts everything I have heard or read about keeping snakes, however none of their animals had burns and all looked healthy and in great shape. Am I missing something here? I just took it as a bit of a shock. Just out of my own curosity when I get home today I am going to hook up the heat mat to the vision cage without a thermostat (snake is still in his old cage) and see how how the spot actually gets... Ok I'm done ranting now. Thanks.

People like to think they can do that, and then they are the ones that come here with a burned snake and wonder what went wrong.

Its not a smart idea. Either use a thermostat or prepare for the inevitable vet bill. If you search the forum, you can find people doing experiments with unregulated heat sources... they all climb well over 110º, sometimes even higher.

I figured as much...all my other enclosures have the hydrofarm tstats on them, I am just looking to upgrade. I just don't understand how freely "absolute" advice like this is given out. What if you were new to reptiles just took their word at face value?:confusd:

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Originally Posted by jclaiborne

I figured as much...all my other enclosures have the hydrofarm tstats on them, I am just looking to upgrade. I just don't understand how freely "absolute" advice like this is given out. What if you were new to reptiles just took their word at face value?:confusd:

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Sadly this happens to a massive amount of new keepers. They usually seek advice from pet store employees who either have no idea what they are talking about, or they just regurgitate what their management told them. I'm not exactly sure why the employees would tell you to NOT buy something... I would figure they would want the sale.. Even if it really was unnecessary they could still make some money off you.

The sad thing is I really love this shop, and they always had great info and were very helpful. I normally can't say enough GREAT things about them. After this however I'm a little concerned. I normally go to a different location, but this one was closer to my work and I went on my lunch break, it would be interesting to see if the employees at the other location have the same opinion.

I've been wanting to comment on this subject for quite a while but have been too afraid of everyone attacking me for it because I know it's such a big deal. But I think you can run a heat pad without a thermostat as long as you monitor it. As you said the store has been doing it and none of their animals were injured because they monitor the heat. They are the thermostat. I've been doing the same for 10 years and have never owned a thermostat. None of my animals have ever been burned because I monitor it using a temp gun. I use enough substrate to diffuse the heat more evenly and acquire a perfect hot spot of 90 degrees. All of my animals thermoregulate normally. When they get to warm they move to their cool hide when they cool down they go back to the warm hide. I've never had a problem keeping the temperatures correct or keeping humidity up. I've heard of many people using thermostats that have to set them to 100 degrees or higher just to get the hot spot at 90 where the snake would be sitting. So some people have problems even when they are using a thermostat. But none of my snakes ever dig in the substrate because there's only about 1in of it so they just don't dig around in it or move it. But I'm not recommending not using a thermostat because they are very useful and needed by a novice owner or by people too busy to monitor the heat themselves, but I think you can go without one and still be okay as long as you monitor closely. :) this is just my experience and I hope I've not offended anyone, and I hope no one jumps on me for my post. Don't lose all faith in your shop. They are just doing what works for them, and since it's not having any adverse affects on their animals than they will continue to do so and so shall I. :)


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Found this in about 1 minute on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyP1GwEIQ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGBgoPP2kg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfTbNzRireQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS_l6Jf1NLs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HasPkKY7NY

I know from testing my UTH heaters (without a snake in the tub) that they get VERY hot. Mine hit 113 degrees before I unplugged it. They are plugged into dimmers that can be set at a certain temperature. I would rather not risk my snakes being cooked alive, as I have seen for myself how hot they can get.

The other day I questioned my local shop on their hot rocks.
They said between the 20 years they never ever had a problem and they always hear people saying bad things about them but they swear up and down that hot rocks are fine and people make stuff up.
They also went to Cornell and the people up there said theres nothing wrong with hot rocks and if some was wrong it was because of something else that the handler did wrong

Because anyone can put anything, say anything on the internet

It happeneds

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Its not a smart idea. Either use a thermostat or prepare for the inevitable vet bill. If you search the forum, you can find people doing experiments with unregulated heat sources... they all climb well over 110º, sometimes even higher.

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^^^ That is an exaggeration (Or maybe my ambient temp is considerably lower). I have some UTH's that I have yet to get over 102 degrees F as measured directly on the surface of the UTH (they are taped on so I could pull it of to measure quickly.) with a Fluke IR gun @ 95% emissivity.

Now on to why no T-stat is still a horrible idea. Many "semi-regulated" heat sources use a resistor to lower the energy available to the heat source, or a mini-circuit designed to keep the output lower than the maximum potential. If these burn out and the circuit is broken you have no burnt snake, just a temp drop but, no alarm indicating you have a problem you need to fix. Yet, oddly most seem prone to failing in the "fully on" position much like the vast majority of heat rocks. They then exceed their normal operating temp's and can climb to over 130 degrees F pretty quickly.

Edit seems to be not working for me atm.
The rest of that advice offered by that user(other than declaring all temp's will be XX) is spot on.
Buy and use the thermostat, it can be cheaper than a single vet visit and involve no suffering on your animals part.

I didn't watch the videos all the way through, but from what I gathered, the snakes in those youtube videos either came into direct (or nearly direct) contact with the heating pad, or the cause wasn't specified. I am wondering if the pet store employees meant that the plastic of the cage you were talking about would be enough of a buffer to keep the snake from getting burned even if it rested on the bare plastic? (Or were they counting on substrate to protect the snake?)

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Originally Posted by kat_black181

I know from testing my UTH heaters (without a snake in the tub) that they get VERY hot. Mine hit 113 degrees before I unplugged it. They are plugged into dimmers that can be set at a certain temperature. I would rather not risk my snakes being cooked alive, as I have seen for myself how hot they can get.

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actually you cannot set a heat source to a specific temperature with a dimmer, its not possible.

if, and only if, thermal conductivity around the heat source stays constant, you can use a dimmer to set a temperature difference between the current ambient room temperature, and the hot spot. like for example, room temperature + 10 degrees.

with a dimmer, if your room cools down by 10 degrees, your hot spot follows. if your room gets 10 degrees warmer, your hot spot follows. so with dimmers it only works properly if the room temperature stays constant. even in that case thermostats have an advantage: you get redundancy if the heating of the room fails and the room gets cold. thermostats will compensate and ramp up the UTH to keep the hotspot comfy, dimmers wont.

but at least dimmers can do the job of preventing a burn, unless your room gets a heat spike so bad that your whole room goes to desert-like temperatures.

@OP: i skipped a bit through 3 of the vids, i see bad burns, but i really dont want to watch all 5 vids from start to finish. i guess i wont be the only one, so, could you sum up what contradictions you see between the videos? i guess its different treatment of burns and contradictory statements on how to treat them, right?

in closing: never use a heat source without at least a dimmer, while a thermostat is definitively optimal. and test-run your enclosure before putting the snake in. and when you want to use a heat stone with built-in t-stat, pay the extra money to get one that fails gracefully. cheap ones often fail in a 100% on position and burn reptiles, there are newer designs that have a safety preventing this failure. when these fail, they turn off and get cold.


EDIT: although i do not recall clicking this thread before, it took me to post +7 and i failed to notice, and 10 minutes of editing wont be enough to fix it, damn. apologies if my post now makes less sense than it could.

edit2: BTW you have 10 minutes for editing, after 10 minutes it is locked down and you cannot edit.

now i read up, i feared my post would be totally nonsensical because i at first missed the first 6 post, but its not too bad.


about the mystery of how they do it with unregulated heat sources:

it can be possible, but i can only think of exactly one option: You need to buy a heater with extremely low output. like 5 watts, 8 watts, or 10 watts. if the maximum output is very very low, it basically works like a more powerful UTH on a dimmer. but you need to test-run, you need to use the ones with extremely low output, and when it gets too hot there is no dial you can turn to fix it, you need to replace the UTH with one that has a lower maximum output levels. i think thats the secret, instead of dimming they use heaters with an extremely low maximum energy output.

fwiw... back in the good old days I used UTH's and hotrocks without thermostats, and didn't burn any of my snakes...

I now use herpstat's because I wouldn't want to burn a snake. I just didn't know any better back then. I think as long as the hotrock/UTH doesn't malfunction, you're probably good...but I'm not gonna risk any of my babies on some $10 chinese made heat source...lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pythonfriend

actually you cannot set a heat source to a specific temperature with a dimmer, its not possible.

if, and only if, thermal conductivity around the heat source stays constant, you can use a dimmer to set a temperature difference between the current ambient room temperature, and the hot spot. like for example, room temperature + 10 degrees.

with a dimmer, if your room cools down by 10 degrees, your hot spot follows. if your room gets 10 degrees warmer, your hot spot follows. so with dimmers it only works properly if the room temperature stays constant. even in that case thermostats have an advantage: you get redundancy if the heating of the room fails and the room gets cold. thermostats will compensate and ramp up the UTH to keep the hotspot comfy, dimmers wont.

but at least dimmers can do the job of preventing a burn, unless your room gets a heat spike so bad that your whole room goes to desert-like temperatures.

@OP: i skipped a bit through 3 of the vids, i see bad burns, but i really dont want to watch all 5 vids from start to finish. i guess i wont be the only one, so, could you sum up what contradictions you see between the videos? i guess its different treatment of burns and contradictory statements on how to treat them, right?

in closing: never use a heat source without at least a dimmer, while a thermostat is definitively optimal. and test-run your enclosure before putting the snake in. and when you want to use a heat stone with built-in t-stat, pay the extra money to get one that fails gracefully. cheap ones often fail in a 100% on position and burn reptiles, there are newer designs that have a safety preventing this failure. when these fail, they turn off and get cold.


EDIT: although i do not recall clicking this thread before, it took me to post +7 and i failed to notice, and 10 minutes of editing wont be enough to fix it, damn. apologies if my post now makes less sense than it could.

edit2: BTW you have 10 minutes for editing, after 10 minutes it is locked down and you cannot edit.

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I think I worded it wrong.

However, the temperatures are stable, sometimes vary by a degree or two.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Surrealle

I didn't watch the videos all the way through, but from what I gathered, the snakes in those youtube videos either came into direct (or nearly direct) contact with the heating pad, or the cause wasn't specified. I am wondering if the pet store employees meant that the plastic of the cage you were talking about would be enough of a buffer to keep the snake from getting burned even if it rested on the bare plastic? (Or were they counting on substrate to protect the snake?)

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They were saying with the thickness of the Vision cage it would keep it from getting too hot. I tested this tonight and the vision without substrate got up to 113 before I unplugged it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pythonfriend

now i read up, i feared my post would be totally nonsensical because i at first missed the first 6 post, but its not too bad.


about the mystery of how they do it with unregulated heat sources:

it can be possible, but i can only think of exactly one option: You need to buy a heater with extremely low output. like 5 watts, 8 watts, or 10 watts. if the maximum output is very very low, it basically works like a more powerful UTH on a dimmer. but you need to test-run, you need to use the ones with extremely low output, and when it gets too hot there is no dial you can turn to fix it, you need to replace the UTH with one that has a lower maximum output levels. i think thats the secret, instead of dimming they use heaters with an extremely low maximum energy output.

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The heat pad they said they use is 24 watts.