New BP owner, I believe thermostat has shorted/stopped working Advice pls.

[Eltharion]

Hi everyone,

So I'm a new BP owner, I have a 20 gal long set up with a flukers medium heat mat on an exo terra thermostat, as well as a 60w ceramic heater.

This evening/morning I have reason to suspect that my thermostat just isn't working. I was keeping the hot side at about 91.2 F and over the last 6 hours its been consistently 83.

I already have a new thermostat coming on Sunday, but my question is, would I be able to run the heat mat TEMPORARILY without the thermostat so that I can get the "proper" temperatures? I have about 1 inch of cypress mulch substrate and I've been using an infrared heat gun as well as a digital probe thermometer to monitor the tank.

And advice or ideas are welcome.

[XpensiveWino]

A few things: if you have the ceramic heater and you can't control the heat mat, unplug the heat mat completely. Your snake will be ok without belly heat for a few days. No need to risk a burn or brain damage.

Now, you said you have an inch of cypress. Are you temping the surface of that over the heat mat? How is your thermostat probe set up on the mat? The heat mat will likely never heat the top of an inch of cypress to the desired temp, plus the mat would get to an unsafe hot temp if you did get it to heat an inch of cypress. BP's will 'next' and clear out the substrate.

*Usually* you would have the area above the heat mat bare, or with very little substrate. Temp the glass above the mat. Put the thermostat probe between the mat and the glass.

You probably already have some or more of these details in order, but I just wanted to check before you went and bought another thermostat and went through the same issue again.

Report back, you. might just have some setup issues vs an equipment failure. Send pics too if you like, plus we like to see your animal!

[Hugsplox]

I wouldn't run your UTH at all without a thermostat. When I first started keeping bearded dragons, before I ever got a BP, I almost cooked a dubia colony with a tiny UTH because it wasn't on a thermostat. (Dumb newbie mistake) It's just not worth the risk. A CHE, if you can control the temp safely will be alright for your ambient temps, and in fact there are several users here who don't use any belly heat at all and their snakes are fantastic.

Also, like Xpensivewino said, are you checking on top of your substrate or on the glass? I always use the temperature on the glass as I noticed immediately that my guy would wiggle his way down to the glass, and if I had set my thermostat for substrate surface temp instead of at the glass it would have been way too hot.

[Eltharion]

Hi sorry for the late reply, as I didn't receive a notification (probably my bad!) I can confirm it was a problem with the thermostat because i tried it with both of my reptitherm mats and the new flukers mat I have. It never heated any of them. I have since unplugged the heat mat before writing this reply, so thank you for that!

I was doing a measure of temps both directly at the glass and on top of the substrate. with the thermostat it was only ever reading at 81 F at the glass, even though the thermostat was set to maintain 91F.

For the thermostat probe I had it taped directly to the mat, but when the new one I ordered comes in I will definitely try it placed between the mat and the glass, but isn't that going to affect the heat since the matt will not be in direct contact with the glass?

here is a picture of my overall set up, the hot side is on the right:




And then here is a couple of photos of my beloved family member:

[olivv]

Such a cute n happy bp!!

Heat mats I've found are generally unreliable for ambient temps, only because it does a very poor job at actually changing the temp of the air- a ceramic heat emitter is much more suitable for this reason.

If you do want to use it, without the risk of burning your python with less substrate, you can buy a light dimmer at a home improvement store for around $10 that will allow you to change the temp easily.

[Eltharion]

I have a decent thermostat that I saw was recommended on here that will be here on Sunday for it. I wanted it to give him the option of being warmer in the hide. Would I need to get a higher wattage ceramic bulb? With the 65 watt bulb i am getting ambient Temps of only 86.4 on average.

And yes I'm hoping he's just finally becoming comfortable enough to come out and explore. He's been all over the tank top to bottom for the last 2 and a half hours. I was worried he was stressed out.

[olivv]

When I had my BP, I used a 70 watt ceramic heat emitter to achieve temps of about 89-90 degrees for his basking area.

I recommend the same thing to you as well. I would spend some time adjusting the height of the lamp and monitoring temps for at least an hour to ensure it doesn't get too hot or too cold. I had a 20g enclosure as well.