So I got my t8 and have had our BP in there about a week and a half - I'm very happy with it's ability to hold humidity compared to an aquarium - but the heat tape is not working as well as expected. I have my Herpstat probe on bottom where the heat tape is, and an Accu-rite thermometer inside with it's probe on the floor over the center of where the heat tape covers the bottom. But I'm finding that to get that probe up to the low 90s, I have to turn my Herpstat and heat tape to 104-105 degrees. And that's just to get the plastic floor up over 90 degrees, not any substrate on top of it. Is this normal? I didn't think I would have to heat that tape up so much to get it to penetrate through the plastic. And for reference, this is with humidity at 50-60% (I find changing the ambient humidity affects the temperature quite a bit due to heat loss from evaporation) and with the T8 on one of those plastic-topped portable tables with the metal legs that fold in. There is also a thin (1/8" maybe" board in between the T8 and the tabletop, because the table folds in the middle also and I felt the top wasn't quite flat from the joint, and I wanted the cage on a very flat surface so it wouldn't stress the plastic or something from the weight being unevenly carried. Anyway, I don't think there is any gap between the board and the heat taped cage bottom, which if there was might explain why the heat wasn't penetrating efficiently. Oh, and the room it's in is being kept around 74 degrees.

Thanks for reading all that jabber and for posting any thoughts!