Getting The Right Temps

[Vanthios]

So I've just set up an entirely new terrarium for my BP since the one I received when I purchased him was a small 20G with little substrate, a single hide, and a cheap heating pad. I've moved him up to a 40G breeder tank, complete with an array of new hides, water dishes, and plants to hide under. However, I'm now finding it difficult to reach a quality gradient. A gradient exists at the moment, but it's holding equally across at about 10 degrees beneath what it should be. I have a medium ZooMed UTH because I really wanted to get him what he really needed and Amazon was my best bet for cost efficiency and shipping speed. I have it taped to the bottom of the tank using duct tape (the metal tape for air ducts in housing), as recommended. My hydrofarm thermostat's probe is taped to the bottom of the pad, not between the pad and the tank (you can find another one of my threads where I question the practicality of taping it between the two). I'm really starting to see why the pad had the reviews it did, though. It seems that the heat really only comes from the center of the pad, and sort of decays as you move away. I moved his favorite hide over the center of the heat pad, and set the thermostat to 95 so the heat could penetrate the most without being high enough to possibly burn him. My Acurite's probe isn't even coming to the lower margin of recommended temperatures, though. I even have a 100W infrared bulb going full blast to increase the general temperature -- still not there. I don't really know what to do. Should I invest two flexwatts, run them in parallel, then mount them to the bottom of the tank? As far as I'm concerned, the ZooMed has yet to really do anything.

I also was having a humidity problem in the my other vivarium, but now my humidity is too high. Right now it's holding at 63%-64%. I'm not sure if this is a big deal, but I guess it's good that it's not in the 40s, like it was in the other tank.




Also, he seems to hang a lot over in the denser area shown in the image above. Me, being dumb, made that the cold side. So it seems he enjoys the cold side, which is in the mid 70s at the moment, more than the warm side, which is topping out at 83, 84. I'm starting to become worried.