New tank setup!

Hey :) I went to a reptile fair and bought some new stuff, like an UTH
I was wondering if i still need to put my light bulbs or not (I have a red one for the night, and white one for the day)
I also changed the water bowl and put it on the cold side
There's also a big branch but I didn't put it in for the picture
What do you guys think?
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14...11923950a7.jpg
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14...5d95842967.jpg

The lights are a personal preference unless you need them to keep your air temp correct. I personally like having lights in my tanks so I provide them with a day bulb. For night I have a lamp in the room with a red bulb but that's more for me to check in on my collection at night than it is for them.

BPs live in burrows, hunt at night, and don't require any UV light for health. So they really don't care one way or the other. That being said I think displays look prettier when illuminated and because of their night time activity having a bulb so you can see them when they are active is nice. But as you can see from just looking at rack systems opaque drawers are not uncommon, which is because BPs dont need light of any kind.

I would not however use any kind of heat lamp for night time illumination or during day time. You said you have a UTH so they can get heat if they need it but they also need to be able to get away from the heat if they need to so having too much heat in the tank should be avoided. Otherwise you can run into a situation where the snake spends its time in the water bowl trying to lose heat which can cause other health issues.

I switched off the lamp at night to see if the UTH was enough.. but the temp dropped at 21°C (71 F) waaaaay to cold! so i switched it back on around 2am
But at 6am my mom woke me up because there's was a smell like something was burning..
i think i'm going to avoid using the UTH for now.

what do you put underneath your UTH? (facing the furniture)

Yikes. Its not like the UTH goes up to 150 degrees to get the tank to 90... so unless its sitting on styrofoam or like I don't know, kindling maybe, you shouldnt be scorching the furniture. As long as your hotspot, which should be in the hide, is staying up and your tank gets up past 78 during the day 71 isn't that big of a deal over night your snake will just stay in the hide.

Maybe look at the wire of your UTH see if there is a fray?

Do you have a thermostat on the UTH? If not then yes it can get hot enough to burn things, including your snake.

Wow, ya sorry, that is a great point.

I was assuming that since you knew the temp of your enclosure you had some control on your heat. But that is true, if you just plug the UTH into the wall it there is nothing keeping it from going crazy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Velrys

Wow, ya sorry, that is a great point.

I was assuming that since you knew the temp of your enclosure you had some control on your heat. But that is true, if you just plug the UTH into the wall it there is nothing keeping it from going crazy.

---

LOL yeah I've learned that if someone has temperature questions and a UTH, it's safe to assume there's no t-stat in the setup.

Spotted the cause of the bad smell.. One of my fake plants melted on a bulb and now the sticky parts on it are "burning" causing the smell :P so the UTH isn't the problem
And I red about the thermostat but don't have one, yet
Gonna check the petstores or breeders if they sell some
Till then I won't use the UTH
Gonna put a thermometer at the hot side too, just to make sure it doesn't get too hot with bulb + UTH when I place it

Thanks everyone for the answers :)

HA! bcr229 good call.

I guess it might be worth mentioning as well that checking the temp on that side of the tank isn't all that useful. You want your probe, the part of the thermometer that takes the reading, where he animal is. That would be inside the hide in the substrate down where the UTH is producing heat, or since you are currently using a bulb on the top surface of the hide which can get significantly hotter than inside if you are heating from the top.

The uth will not help your ambient temp. They do next to nothing for heating your enclosure. It sounds like a bulb or che is a must for you.

So basically i need to get
- a thermostat
- a thermometer
And put the UTH Under the hide
But leave the bulbs on for the ambient temp
Right?

I placed the UTH after getting a tstat
I put the probe inside, under the substrate next to the wall of the tank and secured
I set it to be 90 during the day and 82 at night
But the temps don't get passed the 80, even during the day..
I also took my bulbs away since they were taking all the humidity
But now the ambient temp at the cool side is around 68 all day..

Any ideas to make this better? [emoji20]

Since everyone else hit the main points I'll just point out that having a cool side hide is a good idea too, that way your snake can choose when to be in either the hot side or cool side. I know you mentioned having a log but I wasn't sure if that was another hide or not? BP's generally prefer security so offering one hide means the snake is forced to choose the one hide over proper thermoregulation. Some days when I check on mine they are in the cool side hide and later that night I'll find them in their hot side hide box.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diaspora

I put the probe inside, under the substrate next to the wall of the tank and secured

---

Which probe, the thermostat probe, or the thermometer probe? You want the thermostat probe outside the tank sandwiched between the UTH and the outside bottom of the enclosure. This way the thermostat is monitoring the temp of the UTH and the UTH alone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diaspora

I set it to be 90 during the day and 82 at night

---

Because your thermostat probe should be on the outside of the cage (reading the temperature of the UTH only), you may need to set the temperature higher. My thermostat is set to keep the UTH at 96 deg. The internal floor temperature fluctuates between 88 and 92.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diaspora

But the temps don't get passed the 80, even during the day..

---

How and where are you measuring those temps? Is that the reading from a thermometer, or a thermostat? Where is the probe placed that measures that degree? (Remember the UTH won't increase ambient air temperature all that much.)

And like I said, you might have to keep the UTH a little warmer so that the proper amount of heat inside the enclosure.
Hope that helps! Let us know if anything is still unclear.

I made a hide for the cool side too. But she almost never goes to the cool side except when she's thirsty :p


The probe is the thermostat's. i don't have an IR thermometer to read the temps on the hot side above the UTH.
The thermostat probe is like i said on the side of the tank, under the substrate. That way i wanted to know what temperature there really is for my snake under it's hide.
The thing that i don't understand is that i set the temps to be 90 during the day and 82 at night
So basically, as long as the probe doesn't read those temps, the UTH should increase the temperature right? :confusd:
so i'm not supposed to change the temps unless i put my probe outside of the tank, sandwiched like you said..

I just have one thermometer reading the ambient temp (the 68F i was talking about)
This one is on the cool side on the wall of the tank.
since i removed the bulbs, the humidity is perfect. i don't really want to put them back to keep it this way, but the ambient temp kinda worries me though..

Thanks for clarifying. There are several reasons you want the thermostat probe outside of the tank. Say your snake pees/defecates on the thermostat probe, or wiggles around on the substrate and somehow moves the probe off of the hot spot. Any sort of thing like this would affect the way your thermostat regulates your UTH, and could cause your UTH to get too hot. That's why it is recommended to have your thermostat probe outside, and a thermometer probe inside at the spot you have your thermostat probe currently. (And, after all, both IR thermometers and Accurite two-zone thermometers are quite inexpensive)

BUT, it sounds like your issue is your thermostat reading never gets above 80 degrees? What brand of UTH are you using, what size, and how is it affixed to your tank? You might have a defective model.

for the thermostat probe, it goes outside the tank between the pad and bottom of tank. and its fine to keep it at 90 for the hotspot the whole time. they will move when they are warm enough and thats not enough to burn them

The UTH is a Terra Heatmat TerProducts (i bought it at a fair (Belgium)) so I don't think we have the same brands.. It's around 30cm (my tank is 1m) and I didn't fixed it
It's just underneath my thank on thin isolation layers
I elevated my tank just a little as said in other posts to allow air to pass

And the thermostat is a Lucky Reptile TCP 2

But I'll try putting my probe outside tomorrow or the day after, since Kaliya ate yesterday, just gonna wait for her to digest peacefully :)

I'll try also to find that IR thermometer next time I go to the shop

Moved my probe
Now the temp of the UTH is perfect :D

Just gotta find a way now to increase the ambient temp without putting the bulbs back.. ><

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diaspora

Moved my probe
Now the temp of the UTH is perfect :D

Just gotta find a way now to increase the ambient temp without putting the bulbs back.. ><

---

Hi, did you find a way yet to increase the ambient temperature? I have almost the same situation here!

If I rely on my heatmat, the ambient temperature in my tank goes down to (almost) room temperature (21 C, 71 F). So I switched on my CHE again, only this time a 65W CHE. Before that I had a 100W CHE, but my temp on the hot side-hide got up to 109 F (42.5 C !!! :O). My BP's never went there, I now know why. :rolleyes:

I can't think of a way to put the thermostat probe of my TCP 2 (Thermo Control Pro II, by Lucky Reptile) under my tank......:confusd:
My tank sits on styrofoam. Maybe if I made a indentation in the foam....... but then the probe sit's under the heatmat (not 'on' it). Iaw the heatmat sit's inbetween my thermostate probe and the tank.. Is that good or bad? :confuzd:

I didn't find a way yet.. I put my red heat bulb outside the tank, just above the glass and the ambient temp got up to 23C (it's something.. [emoji55])
I think I'm going to put both of them there (day and night bulbs) but gotta buy the domes first :P

Normally your probe should be between your heatmat and your tank :P
But it still does measure the temp of your heatmat though, so I don't really know [emoji37]