Darn Canadian Winters

Yeah sorta stole the title from first time herps thread in the general forum, but I was thinking about posting this earlier. :)

Well, for the past few weeks the temperature has dropped in my room, due to fall and winter weather cooling things down. Which meant my tank went down in temperatures. A bit too much for my liking. For the past few weeks I've had to keep Pelota in her warm side, keeping it at a varying temp of 85-88, hoping she wouldn't venture off to the 70 degree cool side. Well it was fine for a few weeks until the last few nights, she's been going in the cool side. At first I thought "well she knows what she's doing. She should be back in the warm side soon enough". Well around 6am, many hours later, I went up to my room and checked the temps, and the cool side was still at 70 or so, and she was still in there. So I had to get little ice cold Pelota out of the hide and show her to the warm hide.
Of course, I wasn't sure if she likes cool temperatures or what, but I didn't want to take anymore chances, so I decided to move the cool hide near the center of the tank, so it's closer to the heat pad. Then I rearranged the cage a bit around that. Now her warm hide is still the same, but a short bit away from that, in the center of the cage, is the cool side. Then I took the water bowl which was originally in the center of the cage, and put it in the far corner of the previous cool side. I put a bunch of my fake greenery around the bowl so she has some cover, and put some greenage on the hide thats in the middle of the tank for cover so it doesn't look so bare and open. Now last I checked a few hours ago, the temperatures were 88 warm, 80 cool. This should be okay right? The hides don't always have to be across the tank right? As long as she can thermoregulate between hides I hope. :)

Wish I could take some pictures. Both of the cage and Pelota. Haven't been able to post her yet.:( She's got such a lovely pattern. :aww:

Well there you go stealing my topic titles. LOL!
I don't think theres anything wrong with that, I was thinking of doing that with Link's cool hide.

Sounds like you did a good job working it out. :)

We have an old house, and on the main floor the temperatures tend to fluctuate a lot. In the winter, the room where I have my snakes tends to get pretty cold. So a couple weeks ago, I went to Lowe's and bought an electric heater with a thermostat on it. This is it: http://www.lowes.com/lkn?action=prod...641-39646-5620 It's nice and quiet. I keep the thermostat set at 78, so I know the temperature in that room will never drop below that. It's worked so well that I'm probably going to end up buying a humidifier to put back there when it gets really cold so that I don't have to fret about the dry winter air.

sweet, that looks pretty nice. i have a heater that i use in the room with my herps but it doesn't have a thermostat. i may have to swing by lowe's and see about picking one of those up. not that it is terribly cold here, but there is a month or two where the nights are way too chilly for my little cold blooded critters. thanks for the tip smynx!

my family turns the heat down everynight, and it stays retty nippy during the day. My temps have gone down a good bit. Kitty keeps hanging out on the cool side. I just changed his enclosure, new hide, new space, one new plant, same water source, same branch, one old plant. He does not want to stay in his warm hide and it is getting colder. What is the deal? He didn't really want to stay in his old hide in the new enclosure either. I had to replace it, but I didn't figure he would reject the new hide. What should I do? Should I try to raise the overall temps more than usual to compensate?

Are you measuring surface temps or ambient temps? The surface of the enclosure may be warm than the air.

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Originally Posted by Smynx

Are you measuring surface temps or ambient temps? The surface of the enclosure may be warm than the air.

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Are you measuring surface temps or ambient temps?

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Who me? I am measuring the ambient temp. The floor of the warm side is warmer than the air, but the wholt thing is not warm enough for my liking and the cool side really isn't

Where do you have your thermometers placed? Are they close to the surface? If the thermometers aren't actually stuck to the sides of your enclosure, I suggest placing them right on the surface of the enclosure. Are you using analog or digital? Analogs are notorious for being wrong.

Also, you might want to check temps inside the hides which can be much warmer than outside them.

yep, im Toronto and am in the same boat trying to keep the temp from dropping too much....i've found that my guy doesnt mind 80....i wouldnt let it get below 75 for too long though.....i have an underpad stuck to the bottom which keeps the hide pretty warm even if the rest of the terrarium cools off a bit.

I have the thermometer, digital, situated inthe same way they were in the old tank. I have never had problems with the readings being off, I am just having trouble with the temps. They are in approraite places to measure temp

Then I would suggest a small space heater to warm the room.

I may end up doing that myself Smynx... I somtimes have a hard time controling the snake room temperature. I need the room the chinchilla is in to be below 70 and the snake room to be like 76... Do most space heaters have a built in thermostat?

You might want to get a temp gun to measure temps in the future. (If you can't move all your probes around or you have a lot of herps or something). It's nice to be able to measure in many different spots of the tank. (I'm a geek, what can I say...besides, it always seems cooler in my apartment than what the theromstat says, and I've been checking out temps in diff sections of the apartment with it :P )


In fact, I just recently discovered I have one small spot in my bp's tank at 100 degrees!!! :shock:

I don't think my bp has any chance of being burned, and it explains why I never see him in that spot. I rearranged the tank a bit to change that, but overall the tank temp is good. I just need to move it away from the drafty windows, which I will do this weekend.

Greenman, no most space heaters don't have a thermostat. I was surprised to find one for only $40.

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You might want to get a temp gun to measure temps in the future.

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good idear...
I too have noticed that temps vary from place to place. It'd still be good to have a thermostat to get a general idea though. My snake room is not all that big and the door is always closed. Should be fairly easy to control the ambient temp.

What kind of temp gun do you use? I would like one that I am positive shows the correct temperatures. I am tired of messing around with thermometers. I have about 5 different kinds and when placed in the same spot, will vary a fair amount in readings.... very irking...

Walmart.com shows several with thermostats under $40. a couple are actually under $30.

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Originally Posted by green_man

Do most space heaters have a built in thermostat?

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none of the ones i have owned had a thermostat that actually displayed the temperature--it's more of a low, medium, or high option and some have a step or two between each of those. the one i have now can be set to "on" so that the heater stays on all the time or "auto" so the heater only comes on when the room cools below whatever setting you have it on. so it basically works like a thermostat just without the actual temperature reading displayed for you to see. i'll have to play with mine to see how accurate i can get the temps to stay. it's a pretty small and inexpensive heater, but it will heat a moderately sized room without any problem.

Hmm, space heater huh? I will see what I can do about that. It will so up my rent, but thats ok, I suppose. I did that for a couple of weeks last year, anything for my baby

I was actually talking to my mom tonight about the space heater I seen at a local drug store a week ago. I wanted to pick it up, but it was 30 dollars, and I only had 15 on me. :( Dunno if it had a thermostat, but either way, it'd be nice to have some extra heat in my room for the snake. Dunno where I'd sleep though. I hate being warm at night. I'd probably have the space heater for the snakes tank, and a fan for me while I sleep, lol. :)

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I hate being warm at night. I'd probably have the space heater for the snakes tank, and a fan for me while I sleep, lol.

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That's exactly what I do.

http://www.tempgun.com

I picked up the PE-2 at the tinley show. It's nice to have that laser on the end showing you exactly what spot you're trying to measure at. I think you'll still get some variance, but I like being able to "point and click" at different spots of the tank. I think they just came out with the PE-3, since they didn't have that model at the show.

So far, the only thing I wish the PE-2 had was a strap attached to it. I've set it down several times and had to hunt around for it. Also, it would be nice to just hang it on my arm when I've got my hands full working on something my bp's cage. I think the PE-3 acutally runs on normal AA batteries intestead of watch batteries, but it's 100$ as compared to 45$.

Haha, the PE-3 also has that wrist strap you want. It sorta teases ya on the pic of the package on the site. "Oooh look! A wrist strap!". lol

Wish I had the extra money, or a credit card...I want one of those. :(

I know, and it runs on regular batteries. My first reaction to seeing that was "hey, they didn't have that for sale at the show, and nobody told me about it!" Oh well :)