Boaphile plastics 222d enclosure questions

[queenelvis82]

Hello all,
I bought a 222d enclosure for my year old Suriname. I set it up and am waiting for the husbandry to be up to par. For the life of me, I cannot get the temperature correct. I have a radiant heat panel on the ceiling of the enclosure. I connected it to a Hydrofarm thermostat to the panel and played around with the settings. The probe is about an inch from the panel and I set the settings from 95 F up to 104 F. Whenever I use my temp gun to measure the temperature on the floor beneath the panel, the hottest temp I got was 85 F. I finally just connected the panel to the outlet without the thermostat and the hottest point is still in the lower to mid 80s. Does anybody who has a Boaphile plastics enclosure with a heat panel have this problem? If so, how do you fix it? My girl is still in her glass tank because I do not want to put her in an environment where the husbandry is not correct.

[JoshSloane]

Few questions first. What wattage RHP are you using? What are the ambient room temps that the cage is in? What are the cage dimensions? My experience has only been with RBI heat panels. Usually the 40 watt is perfect for a 4x2x1 and on full blast without a thermostat gets the floor of the cage to about 90 deg. Where did you get the RHP from?

[queenelvis82]

Hello,
My wattage is 50 watts, the ambient room temp is around 67-70 F, the enclosure dimensions are 30", 24", 17.5." I got my RHP from Boaphile.

[Gio]

I am not familiar with what panels Jeff uses. I have used a Hydrofarm on a small UTH, but I'm not sure I'd control a full ambient heat source like a RHP with that thermostat.

I'd highly recommend using a Herpstat for the panel.

Your cage is not very wide so getting temps warm should be fairly easy, but I will say it takes my cages a few days to warm and level out when first set up.

There are different methods, but I will tell you mine. I put the thermostat probe on the opposite side of the heat panel and have it practically touching the floor. I set the thermostat for the cool side temp. The way things are set, the average hot side temp is 10 degrees warmer than the cool side.

So when I set my cool side to 82, my warm side works out to be 92-93 which means the panel needs to push at least 92-93 on the warm side to get the cool/ambient temps to 82-83. This is what the guy at Pro-Products recommended, and he based the panel on my room temps, cage type and size.

Get yourself a better stat. My guess is that Hydrofarm shuts off the second it hits the set temp. The panel may stay warm for a while keeping the stat off, so the floor probably never heats enough especially on the side opposite the panel.

[queenelvis82]

Thank you Gio. I will Try that.

[Gio]

Thank you Gio. I will Try that.

Let us know.

And remember a Herpstat uses proportional dimming. It will run your panel anywhere from 0% to 1% to 100% power to keep the temps spot on.

ON/OFF stats shut off as soon at the unit detects the proper temp, and then they continue to switch on and off to keep the temp.


Hydrofarm is an OK budget stat. I have one, but to me, especially with panels, you need to have something more trustworthy. You are controlling ambient and hot side temps with the same unit so it needs to safe and effective.

I assume you are not using heat tape or a UTH?

Others may have different methods and there is no "one way or no way", however I have a good setup here and I see predictable thermoregulation in all of my snakes.

Good luck, and call Jeff if you have issues. If he answers I'm sure he'll help you.

[queenelvis82]

Gio,
You are correct that I only have the panel as a heat source. I tried your recommendation and put the probe on the cool side of the enclosure. The temperature was perfect when no decorations were in it. Once I put in her climbing and hiding places, the temp dropped and the cool side is maintaining 73 F. I plan on leaving it over night and checking tomorrow. Will let you know how it is. Thank you!

[queenelvis82]

Well I checked with the temp gun and the hot side fluctuates between 87 and 92 F. It depends on where I point the laser. The top of her hide is the hottest part and the 87 F usually is on the floor, underneath a decoration or off center of the panel. The cool side reads 77 F. Are these temps good enough to put my Surniame Red Tail in? Or should I wait until I have another heating source that is more reliable.
Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks

[Gio]

Well I checked with the temp gun and the hot side fluctuates between 87 and 92 F. It depends on where I point the laser. The top of her hide is the hottest part and the 87 F usually is on the floor, underneath a decoration or off center of the panel. The cool side reads 77 F. Are these temps good enough to put my Surniame Red Tail in? Or should I wait until I have another heating source that is more reliable.
Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks

I think I'd get dialed in better and get that Herpstat. The BCCs, especially the Suri and Guyana BCC aren't as tolerant of husbandry errors. 77 seems a bit low to me. I would look at getting the ambient temps up more. Because your cage is not wide, you are not going to get a wide thermal range from hot, to medium to cool.

[JoshSloane]

IMO 77 cool side is fine. Usually I don't worry unless that drops to below 75. I find that even with all my temps dialed into the usual 90-80 split, my boas choose the cool side much more than the warm. This used to drive me insane years ago, until I spoke with some veteran boa breeders and they observed the same behavior.

I even got to the point where I had friends come over and take temp measurements with their equipment to make sure that my temp guns weren't off.