Okay here is my new Glass tank setup with Pics

I purchased a BP on Tuesday this week from a local reptile petshop and they, did not follow the BP.net level of excellance when it comes to the setup they directed me to purchase. I got a 75w infrared heat lamp, pine bedding, log hide, dog bowl.

After spending more time than I will admitt reading books and BP.net info, I think I have a much better setup for Heimlich (my juvinile BP). I know your all thinking that why did you not wait and get educated first. Well I did spend a month reading before the purchase looked at 5 different shops, and thought I had a good handle on what I was looking at. Some of my troubles came from all the conflicting info out there both online, and pet store experts. When purchasing Heimlich and his set up, I questioned many of the items they put together for me, but they always seemed to have an answer. So untill I emersed myself in snake owership, and aquired a few items it did not make total sense.

So here our some of my details of my BP setup. I followed the BP husbandry guide and took a few other suggestions I found on this site.

I have a 40 gallon Critter cage with 2 part screen top and 30" basic black stand. Because I live in So. Cailf. I was concerned about earthquakes and wanted to secure the setup up to the wall to prevent damage and free roaming snake in my home. I installed velcro earth quake strap to the wall stand and bottom of tank.

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Here is the straps installed to the wall before the tank has been placed in position.

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Here is the inside of the tank looking down. 2 ZooMed 40 gallon UTF, 2 home depot dimmers mounted under tank with velcro so I can make adjustments to each UTF independatly one will be hot side other other cold, Acurite Temp/Humdity guage with probe hot glued to top of hot side UTF inside tank, the wire I used a dab of hot glue to keep it secured on bottom of tank.

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Under side of tank looking up.

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I then routed the Home Depot Dimmers from the UTH to a Zilla 1,000 watt thermostat, this is the same as the Alife brand... I could not find a ZooMed Thermostat anywhere in my area. The Zilla was $49 @ Petco. It is working like a charm. I first adjusted the Home Depot Dimmers to a max of 95 degrees and 82 degrees for Hot/Cold side UTH. Then there are plugged into the Zilla Thermostat. Once I got the UTH temps stable I then plugged in the Zilla and set the themostat dial to the point where it would shut off... Easy as can be... Now the my Acurite themometer on top of the hot side UTH is ranging from 94.8 to 95.2 as the Zilla cycles on and off about every 5 minutes. My infrared heat gun reads very close to the same temps as I monitor. I hot glued the Zilla temp probe on the bottom of the Hot Side UTH outside the tank. So far I am very happy with this configuration. I have the cold side all the way off right now as it is very warm in SoCal this week.

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All my wires are zip tied and mounted to the stand with zip tie mounts that have sticky tap on them.... worked out very nice and clean no visable wires.

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Here is Heimlick checking my work, he approved of the temps.... Hot side right on @ 95 Cold side 84.4 and Humidity 59%

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Heimlick checking out his new decor... He seems to approve.

So far things are working like a champ.... I don't need the cold side UTH in the summer but I wanted to install it now so I did not have to do another tear down. I thought it best to use to UTH for a 40g tank since I am using the dimmer method to keep the ZooMeds from hitting their max temps, for safety on my BP. Come winter I think this is going to be a sweet setup.

One finial note my humidity is perfect now, with the infrared heat lamp I could not get my RH up to any higher than 40 with 80% of the screen covered with vinyl plastic sheeting. Now it is holding steady @ 60. Also the pine is in the trash and Heimlick is chillin on Aspen bedding.

Thank so much for everyones help on setting my gear up you guys are a great community. I hope some of these pictures help folks visualize the husbandry setup.

PS I am trying to get this posted as fast as I can, because I need to meet the family for dinner... so I hope this reads ok.

Doug

:clap::clap::clap:

It looks pretty good, and where did you get ur thermometers?

Picked up the Acurite at Wal-Mart for $12.00

nnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooo you cant use pine bedding
no pine bedding

no one else caught the pine bedding, wow thats a big mistake waiting to happen

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dc1

no one else caught the pine bedding, wow thats a big mistake waiting to happen

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That could also be shredded aspen.

Not only did I catch that the pine bedding has been tossed now, I also caught the tape!

NO tape of any kind inside the tank. Period. If I misread that part, I'm sorry. That was a lot of info to take in. :)

Anyway, there are a few other points:
1- Cover the back and both sides of the tank with a solid background ASAP. Then, because glass does not hold heat well, you might do good to add some cork board insulation. :)

2- From what I saw, you only have 1 good hide. You want to make sure you have two identical hides with a single opening, i.e. no half logs, that are dark and snug. :) Dollar store bowls and plastic plant pots are great hides.

3- You must add more 'clutter' in there. Greenery, low branches, whatever you like but fill in that extra space. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dc1

nnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooo you cant use pine bedding
no pine bedding

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X2 Def no pine

I also think you could add some more foilage to fill it up a bit. That should help your bp feel a bit more secure. I would also add another hide.

Adriana, I think the tape you are referring to is on straps on the outside as well as the zip ties(outside). Temps may not be an issue during the summer, but maybe having an option of adding something (foil or acrylic) over the lid to help you out in the winter would be good.

oh i thought that was aspen bedding:weirdface good eye

thanks i am just here for the wellbeing of his pretty new snake :) a lil rep points wouldnt hurt either :P i has just saved his snake

just kidding
but if you want add some rep

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Argentra

Not only did I catch that the pine bedding has been tossed now,

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oh as soon as i saw pine bedding:O i didnt read the rest stupid me :rolleyes: i feel stupid now but if he didnt trash it i would have been the first to spot it and dont the warm side temps need to be around 92 or a little less 95 seems kinda high i have to go check the caresheet now:D

TEMPS: 80-84 F w/ basking 88-94 F

Lots of people are commenting on the pine bedding, THIS IS NOT PINE. What is currently in the tank and what is shown in all the pictures is MedZoo Snake Bedding Shredded Aspen.

I appreciate everyone's comments about adding more decor and some type of backing. I have ordered the MedZoo cork/bark looking tiles. I could not find that product anywhere locally. I plan on adding more flair to the tank, but I wanted to get the fundementals taken care of first. As those of you who have snakes now is you can drop some serious coin on your gear.... I am at about 600.00 for the last 5 days, so the rest of the flair needs to wait a week.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dc1

TEMPS: 80-84 F w/ basking 88-94 F

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He has the probe directly on the UTH under the glass. 95 directly on the UTH will give you 88-92 or so inside.
Aside from needing another hide and foilage I think you did a great job as long as it's holding temps and humidity.

95 is perfectly fine... I keep mine 94-95 hot side under one sheet of newspaper, it's about 94 on top of newspaper. Been keeping them this way since 2003. Ambient room temps are 84-87. Heh, no one refuses food here :)

Did you hot glue or velcro the Accu-Rite unit to the side of the tank? Hopefully you didn't hot glue it. Changing the battery will be difficult. Otherwise , good job on that setup. I was trying to figure out why you would put straps on it. Then I noticed you were from SoCal... duh, earthquakes. Good forethought...


Rob

Quote:

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Originally Posted by firedoug

I appreciate everyone's comments about adding more decor and some type of backing. I have ordered the MedZoo cork/bark looking tiles. I could not find that product anywhere locally. I plan on adding more flair to the tank, but I wanted to get the fundementals taken care of first. As those of you who have snakes now is you can drop some serious coin on your gear.... I am at about 600.00 for the last 5 days, so the rest of the flair needs to wait a week.

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Yep, but you chose to have a tank. If you had chosen to use a tub, which can look nice too, you would have spent about $120 which would have included a digital Johnson Controls thermostat. Tubs run $5-$10, newspaper is free, aspen is inexpensive, digital thermometer is $12, two hides free to $10 depending on where you get them, water bowl $1-$5, bungee cord to hold lid on if it doesn't lock $2. So $600+ versus $100-$120. Hmm ;)

But yes, definitely clutter up the tank or you're going to have a pretty stressed snake. I would consider covering the sides with black paper or a background(both sides and back).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by firedoug

Lots of people are commenting on the pine bedding, THIS IS NOT PINE. What is currently in the tank and what is shown in all the pictures is MedZoo Snake Bedding Shredded Aspen.

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Its Zoomed Dude.Zoomed. Your welcome. Nice setup though :)

Looking good Firedoug
Question....are you using any CHE or heat lamp? what about the screen top - how do u have it covered?

Vypyrz,

Thanks for the reply... No I used velcro on the Acurite just for the reason you stated about the battery.



Gooli,

Thanks for the reply also and the praise. Not using CHE at this time, in fact the cool side UTH is off because the house is plenty warm during this heat wave we our having this week. Currently covering 80 to 90% with vinyl plastic sheeting from Wal-Mart's fabric dept. I have 3 pieces so I can vary the open/closed space as needed. Currently my outside RH is 18% here in SoCal and I am maintaining 65-75% in the tank. Snake is in shed right now. Prior to re-rigging my tank I was lucky to get the trank RH to 45% with an infrared heat lamp warming the hot side, snake was spending lots of time in his water dish. UTH has made a huge improvement with tank RH.

Doug

I went out and got the zilla thermostat as you did and hooked it up to my UTH.
I set it to 92 and let it sit for a day..after checking the substrate temp over the UTH i discovered two things:

1. the substrate was only at 87.
2. the red light on the thermostat wont even come on unless i turn the dial to 95 degrees.

did u experience something similar?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vypyrz

Did you hot glue or velcro the Accu-Rite unit to the side of the tank? Hopefully you didn't hot glue it. Changing the battery will be difficult. Otherwise , good job on that setup. I was trying to figure out why you would put straps on it. Then I noticed you were from SoCal... duh, earthquakes. Good forethought...


Rob

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wait your not suppose to hot glue, oh man i did on my accurite, should i go buy a new one?

Gooli,

I am not using the temp numbers printed around the adjusting dial on the zilla. What I did was I first plugged my UTH into the dimmers and I adjusted the hot side based on the reading that I see on my Acurite remote sensor glued to the the inside of my tank over the hot side UTH. Once I got this stabilized at 95 degrees, I double checked with my IR heat gun.

From here I plugged the dimmer cord with the UTH into the Zilla thermostat with the Zilla thermostat set in the fully on position(hottest) I then back down the thermostat until it cycles off power to the UTH. This is verified by the relay clicking and the light shutting off. My Zilla thermostat temp probe is glued to the outside and underside of the hot side UTH.

Once you do this you should be golden! The printed numbers on the Zilla case are more for a rough estimate in my oppinion, I don't think it wise to depend on them. Once I did this my hot side temp has stayed within .5 degrees of 95 degrees. I am very pleased with this setup. I may need to tweek it a little more come winter by increasing the power to the UTH by opening up the dimmer some.

The purpose of using the dimmer is a bit redundant, and provides a level of safety. With the power dialed down on the dimmer, the UTF is not capable of reaching the full potential of its output temp, whcih is near 115 degrees, so if the thermostat fails then that is as hot as the UTH will ever get. Plus I believe it is helping stabilize the temps by dialing down the ZooMed UTH output temps. This will cause the UTH to say on longer each cycle than it would if it were plugged directly into the thermostat, and it helps minimize the temp swings of an on/off thermostat.

The benifit of the thermostat is that it will cycle the UTH on an off to mantain the temp. as the ambient temp changes. I notice that in the morning my Zilla thermostat is running more and longer each cycle. Come later in the day and the SoCal heat, the Zilla Thermostat cycles less and for shorter times.

Hope that helps.

thanks so much...you have no idea how much this helps!
i was getting ready to throw in the towel.

i just got back from OSH with the dimmer and will try what you said.
one other question..what IR gun did u get and where?