Ceramic Heathers?

[DarkSmoke]

Ok so today i went to buy 4mice (2for the ball python to feed, 2 to breed) and 2 pinkies for blaze.

and the guy who sold me the mice we started talking and i asked him about his heating and told him that people here told me i must buy 2thermostats and 2 heaters for every snake of different species wich require differend temps (2f for the warm side and 2 for the cool side) and he told me , no listen. i have rainbow boas and he named a bunch of other snakes (he breeds boas too) and told me i use ceramic heathers for all my snakes with a thermostat. he heats his whole vivarium to a certain point with his ceramic heather and is controled by the thormastat instead of having cool/warm and a bunch of money costing things. now he has many snakes and he's a breeder so i doubt he's doing the wrong thing.

now this would relief me from a bunch of costs for my snakes by just buying that. anyone every used them ? cause i never heard anyone naming them when i asked what can i do to not buy all those equipment.

[Kaorte]

Ceramic heaters cost more than uths. If you use a ceramic heater, you still need a thermostat. Ceramic heaters will also sap humidity unlike uths.

You don't need two thermostats for each species, you need one because they have different temp requirements.

A ceramic heater will also burn out and you will need to replace it. If you don't have problems with humidity, there is nothing wrong with using overhead heat to bring temps up a bit. But using only ceramic heaters probably wouldn't work so well, especially for ball pythons.

My best advice is to not listen to petstore employees. They are just trying to sell their products.

[justinsane82]

I prefer ceramic heaters over bulbs as I find that they don't hurt the humidity like bulbs do. They are more expensive though and most have a life in the thousands of hours.

[DarkSmoke]

no this guy is not a petshop guy, this guy is a snake owner which breeds mice too and i found his advert of mice on one of malta's selling sites.

Kaorte , The uth costs me 20euros, the thermostat 30euros. i have bad cool side tempretures, so i need 1UTH + 1Thermostat for the warm, and 1UTH + 1Thermostat for the cool side. plus i need those for the corn snake too . so that makes it 2 UTH + 2 Thermostats. 60euros + 40euros. a ceramic heather costs about 13euros and i only need one to heat the whole viv as he said.

btw can this be done with heatmaths too ? heat the whole ambient tempreture to a certain tempreture instead of warm and cool?

[LadyOhh]

LOL!

I have to say, I have never been ceramic before

[Kaorte]

Depending on what thermostat you got, you can most likely run two UTHs off one thermostat. Just put a dimmer inline with the cool side heat mat so it can run at a lower temp.

I don't know why ceramic heat emitters are so cheap where you are, here they are 40-60USD depending on wattage. Not to mention you also have to get the fixture to go with it, another 20-30USD, added with the fact that the CHE will stop working eventually and you will need to replace it. You should never need to replace a UTH unless it malfunctioned. A CHE will lower your humidity so I wouldn't recommend using one unless your humidity is fairly high in your climate.

There is something called a radiant heat panel that is basically an insulated UTH and is meant to heat the air better. Those are much pricier but if you really hate UTHs you could look into those.

[DarkSmoke]

still you haven't got my point, this guy heats the whole viv to a certain temp, he doesn't have a cool and a warm side. is that possible with a heatmath? getting the whole viv to certain temp instead of having a cool and a warm side?

[Kaorte]

Yes it is possible but ball pythons need a temperature gradient.

[DarkSmoke]

yes i know and thats why i was surprised how this guy doesn't give his snakes a tempreture gradient , and he keeps balls , boas and corns and he bred his boa this year and never had issues with not having a tempreture gradient. and thats why i came here to ask the experts about it maybe i can get an answer cause he really made me curious about it.

[DarkSmoke]

also , one think i have to add, since in summer tempreture really rises up here and everyone who owns snakes here turns of their heath maths (dunno if you do this too , never asked about it on the forum since i got my first snake in the last half month of summer) if they do good at summer without a tempreture gradient, wouldn't they also do good at winter without it?