possible belly burn?

[tmartin2347]

ok so have my 4 standalone tubs over a 3" piece of flex-watt running on a helix dbs1000 thermostat. have had temp set at 93 all day and my temps have been slowly moving around from 90-94 and one tub for some reason got up to 96-97 at a few points. i have the accu-rite thermometer probe in the same spot on all my tubs. so heres my HUUUUUGE problem right now and im pretty pissed off. well i was holding one of my babies and put her back then went to take out another and noticed two little spots of blood. well i take him out and search him all over and it looks like her was getting burned or like a split very small but it was there. whats going on. i just doubled up my paper towels, turned the thermostat down to 90 degrees and have taped down a probe from another thermometer to the flex-watt to see what its saying. and right now it is actually saying its 3 degrees over what my thermostat is set at.

do i need to put a piece of tape over the whole thermostat probe covering it entirely so it doesn't get touched by the open air since these are just on a shelf in a room that is around 73-75 degrees?

[tmartin2347]

no one want to help?

[tmartin2347]

is anyone actually going to try to help me here.

[ADEE]

relax, i dont have an answer for you but it takes a bit to get answers back, not everyone sits on the forum all day to catch threads as they pop up. im certain someone will be able to answer soon just be patient your thread has only been up for 30minutes.. thats nothing. i went a few days on a few occations before getting answers to some of my threads.

[sg1trogdor]

why dont you place the flexwatt on the side of the tub instead of underneath and 94 is way too high to keep it set at all the time i wouldnt go more than ninety and im sure it will be fine just place some antiseptic cream on it and if it looks like it worsens take the animal to the vet.

[dr del]

Hi,

Calm down - its only been 31 minutes since you posted or something.

now do you have any way to take clear pictures of the area for us?

How are your tubs sitting on the flex? are they stacked at all? Where is your probe for the thermometer and for the thermostat?

do you have any idea what the maximum temperatures your little one could have been exposed to? do you know why its varying so much?

once we start working out what happened and how we might be better able to help and hopefully stop it happening to the others.


dr del

[tmartin2347]

sorry for being so impatient. im just really mad and upset and dont know what to do. do you have any good ideas on how to tape the probe to the flex-watt. i first just had tape over the wire right before you got to the probe and had that probe sit in open air but touching the tape. now i have it taped over the whole probe so no free air is touching it. its been like this for about 20 mins and my thermo is set at 90 and that extra thermometer i put on the flex-watt has not gone about 85.
any suggestions?

[dr del]

Hi,

Just another thing to check off the list;

Were the blood spots on the paper towels or the snake, has the snake shed recently?

Also have you checked the thermometers against each other to make sure they are all accurate.

dr del

[dr del]

Hi,

Yup the placement of the probe and how it is affixed can definately affect the tubs temps - thats why in an ideal world we run the setups with no animals in them to calibrate everything.

Thing is I'm not sure 97f is hot enough to actually cause a burn but without good clear images it's impossible for anyone to say.

When you say split do you also see the belly button just to rule out misidentification? The reason I asked about shedding is that it is not uncommon for a few drops of blood to come from the vent area during a shed and the start of a shed can be the cause of a pink looking belly.

From your description we really can't tell yet.


dr del

[tmartin2347]

ok well i dont have any pics at this moment and my camera is not here right now, go figure. all my thermometer probes are taped down to the bottom of the tubs at 3 1/2 inches from the back of the tub dead center. the tubs are raised just under id say an 1/8" . right now i have my thermostat probe taped so no free air can get to it directly on the flex-watt. and the blood was on the substrate and the records do not show a recent shed. i just got him today from adam.