A lot of it depends on what your ambient room temperatures are throughout the year. If they are below 75F you will need a heat source that raise your ambient temperatures, be it a RHP or a CHE.
Heat tape will NOT do that. If you're going to go for two heat sources, you might as well get a RHP + UTH (or heat tape) instead of a UTH and heat tape . If you choose a single heat source, then I feel a RHP is the most practical choice.
As mentioned above, heat tape is prone to needing replacement and rewiring every time. It acts like any UTH and just provides surface temps. It's also worth pointing out, heat tape is often favored for rack systems so if we wanna argue heat tape is more cost effective, then sure, for breeders or keeper with a 10+ snake collection it is.
But for you and a pet snake, honestly I haven't noticed any expensive keeping for my RHP. You just have to worry about the upfront cost, it's not like you're paying rent with it's wattage usage haha. Plus you don't have to replace your RHP and pretty much never need to worry about ambient temps
If we want to talk about practicality I'd vote for a rhp so you can have unchanging ambient temperatures all year around, as like resherpherd mentioned, you wouldn't have to worry about winter temperature drops. Less headaches this way. Saved me from winter woes for sure.
In general there isn't any one size fits all to snake keeping so it will be up to you to decide what best suits your situation.
Originally Posted by MissterDog
A lot of it depends on what your ambient room temperatures are throughout the year. If they are below 75F you will need a heat source that raise your ambient temperatures, be it a RHP or a CHE.
Reply With Quote