I need help/opinions

[AkHerps]

My young Blood is outgrowing his tub and I don't know what to do.
I've had problems from day one keeping his temps steady at 80-82 F in the tub because my room temp is about 70-72. My Blood does not like flexwatt on the bottom of his tub, even if it is 80 or colder F he freaks out and tries frantically to get out.

Right now, his temps are steady only because the sides of his tub are wrapped in 4 inch flexwatt and there is a piece of 11 inch flex watt on the top of his tub. All of this is controlled with a thermostat set at 84 which heats his tub on the inside to about 81. He has never missed a meal since I've had him and is growing and shedding steadily.

The dilemma is how I am going to keep heating larger and larger enclosures efficiently without breaking the bank. I know when he is an adult I am going to custom make a cage because having anything shipped up to Alaska would be way too expensive.

I was thinking about just setting him up in a tank with mulch type bedding or newspaper with moss and a large water dish with a ceramic heat emitter to heat the ambient temps and blacking out 3 of the sides with some sort of insulating material, and tin foiling the top of the exposed screen.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I should do??

Thanks for any and all help!

[kristan]

In the winter my apt stays at about 62 when we're not home, around 70 when we are. I've added radiant heat panels to all of my bloods' cages to keep the ambient temps up, which has worked very well. You will still need a bit of belly heat somewhere in the enclosure, but I think, for my cages, the rhps are providing most of the heat.

[Wh00h0069]

I do not own bloods, but for a boa what I would do is buy an adult PVC cage and install a radiant heat panel. This would heat the hot spot plus the ambient temp. I am not sure what is needed for a blood, but I use 4x2x1 cages for my adult boas.

[Alexandra V]

The radiant heat panels are what I would recommend. Other than that the only thing I can think of is getting a small space heater to bring up the temps of the room that you keep the snake in.