New enclosure and heat

[Roundabout136]

Well i'm pretty sick of my heat lamp, it's killing humidity in my 20 gallon enclosure. I read the threads in the DIY section, and i've pretty much decided to make Gem a new enclosure out of one of those plastic bins. I'm not planning on using a heat lamp for this enclosure for i'm guessing flex watt would be necessary.

Gem's about 33 inches long so any recomendations for tub size? And how much of the bottom of the tub do i need to cover with flex watt? Do i need a thremisdat? Would this regulate the temperature emited from the flex watt? And can i regulate the temperature of the flex watt to be well suited for night time heat?

It's either that or make a custom lid for my 20 gallon. Cut out the wire and fit in some plexy glass to regulate humidity and temperature better.

I've got room for anything, it's not really important what the enclosure looks like to other people, ect. I'm going off to college soon so i'm going to need to hide the snake as much as possible...if you catch my drift.

I think that's about it...Sorry for the many many questions but i'm just real curious on this cheap way of housing a snake. Now i'm pretty mad i baught a 20g. That thing was expensive.

I appreciate any help possible.

[elevatethis]

A good tub to use would be a sterilite 1790 tub, you can get those at any walmart or target. Its a 41 qt tub, if you can't find that, just find one with the most floorspace you can, any vertical height in the tub above 8" or so is just wasted space that they won't use.

Once you get that, you can get some flexwatt heat tape to run belly heat on the back floor of the tub, probably about 1/4 of the floor. Hook that up to a thermostat and you'll be good to go. I recommend using a proportional tstat like a helix or herpstat, but a ranco or jc would work also, just not as good, for half the price of the proportional stat. You wouldn't need to adjust your temps for night-time heat. Unless you are cycling your animals for breeding purposes, a night-drop is not necessary. Just run normal temps 24/7.

This style tub will be awesome to hide under your bed or somewhere like that once you get to college. They are actually meant to be storage boxes for say, under your bed.

I think that covers everything you asked above!

[Roundabout136]

How much are these tstats? And where can i find flexwatt other then online? Would walmart have both of these items? Or any other store like this?

[elevatethis]

The proportional tstats like a helix runs 135.00, a herpstat runs for about 109.00. These are nice because they constantly adjust the level of power output rather than just turn the power on and off like other tstats. Kinda like an automatic rheostat per se. You just set it and forget it. You can find a herpstat here: www.spyderrobotics.com

Johnson Controls or Ranco makes easy to use on/off tstat, and cost around 60-70 each depending on where you get them.

Flexwatt heat tape is probably easiet to find online, as well as the tstats. I wouldn't try to find them locally and then have to pay retail prices.

[Roundabout136]

Hmm that's definately more than i thought, but i'm sure its a good investment, the tstat that is. I've spent so much on this snake, geeeze. Oh well,