Bulb question

[Sonny1318]

They definitely don't need red light. People use red lights for nighttime heat under the mistaken impression that reptiles can't see red, so you can watch them without them knowing. But ball pythons actually can see red light. If you don't believe me, try flashing the lamp at your snake's face and see if you can get a reaction. If the snake reacts, it can obviously see that light.

So if you want to give your snake actual darkness at night you need a bulb that produces no visible light at all. A ceramic heat emitter is essentially that. You screw it into a regular socket, and it makes a lot of heat, but no visible light.

The other reason why a CHE is better than an incandescent bulb of any color is that you can use it with a thermostat, which will turn it on and off as needed in order to keep the cage at the right temperature. If you did that with an incandescent bulb, you'd have this light flickering on and off all the time until the light bulb just burned out. That means you can have a CHE at a higher wattage than you actually need, and it won't overheat the cage - the thermostat will control it. But if your room gets colder, and you need more heat to get the right temperature in the cage, you'll have enough capacity to achieve that and you won't need to touch a thing - it will just adjust automatically, as needed.

Then whatever you do for light for the sake of a day/night cycle can be totally independent of heat.

The UV bulbs people talk about when they talk about providing UV are fluorescent and not at all the same as a black incandescent bulb. The black bulb won't hurt your snake either, but again - your snake can still see it just like you can. So it's darker than a bright light, but it's not actually all the way dark.

Let me get this straight, you move around a hot bulb and you wonder why a snake that sees heat noticed? And yes you can use a Che on a thermostat, but they burn three times hotter at the base then a comparable bulb. Right over your tank, zapping humidity. I’ve been using infrared bulbs for years, so have many others. They work just fine.

[Coluber42]

Let me get this straight, you move around a hot bulb and you wonder why a snake that sees heat noticed? And yes you can use a Che on a thermostat, but they burn three times hotter at the base then a comparable bulb. Right over your tank, zapping humidity. I’ve been using infrared bulbs for years, so have many others. They work just fine.

I know you can use a CHE with a thermostat, that’s what I said. I also did not say that you can’t use “infrared” bulbs, just that if it makes red light that you can see, the snake can see it too and therefore it isn’t all the way dark. They can certainly do just fine with it, I don’t think that in itself is really a big deal. Just something to be aware of.
All of these things produce actual infrared radiation whether or not they produce visible light, but the component of the red light that you can see is in the visible spectrum.

In any case, I personally think a CHE is a better heat source than an incandescent bulb because you can use it with a thermostat to fine-tune the temperature. With an incandescent bulb it’s either on or off, and you get what you get; the only adjustment you can make is to raise it higher above the lid. So if the temperature in your house fluctuates over the course of the day when you’re not at home or at night when you’re asleep, an incandescent heat lamp won’t adjust to compensate.

For the record - to test how my snake would react to red light, I used a red LED bike light. So not much heat there (although they can detect minutely small temperature differences). And I made a point of holding my hand still while turning it on and off, and rotating it in order to point the light different directions. I also tried blocking and un-blocking it with a piece of cardboard. I did this in a totally dark room with nothing but a very dim light inside the cage - just enough that I could see if the snake moved. In other words, I did everything I could think of to make sure that if he reacted, the reaction was to the light itself and not to something else. My conclusion was that yes, he can see it - at least, he can see the wavelengths that that particular LED emits. I did not repeat the test with a wide variety of LED’s in various shades of red.

[ClarinetPhoenix]

I actually use blacklight heat bulbs for both of my snakes for overhead heat. I like them because they are a nice low visible light that doesn't keep me up at night.
I know both snakes can see it because both sometimes look right at the light at night when they're out roaming, but it seems more just curiosity than any adverse attention I also haven't seen any stress signs indicating that it bothers them.
I also chose blacklights because of the low amount of visible light they produce because I keep my snakes near a window so they are running on a natural day/night schedule with the rising-setting of the sun here. I haven't heard that these sorts of bulbs in any color have any adverse effects tho.

[Sunnieskys]

I use lamp dimmers for all my incandescent lights...that's another reason they aren't very bright: I always dim them way down. It's just that some of my
snakes like to bask overnight- my spotted python especially, on her driftwood, but also my Trans Pecos rat snakes like to snooze in their branches or in the
baskets wired into them, so in winter, I "spoil" them with a little overhead warmth...& if it bothered them, they'd use another spot, but they seek it, and they
also have UTH & hides on the floor of all cages. They just appear to LIKE to curl up in baskets...& it's SO cute! My Florida rat snakes & corn snakes all have
baskets they use on & off too, even during the day.

Pictures of snakes in cute baskets please! Lol.