Providing heat?

[Gregg Madden]

I run heat pads on my ackie setup because if I don't, in the winter my foot deep substrate will reach temps in the 50's regardless that the ambient is in the 80's-90's.

Not sure how your substrate temps can be so low... Where are your cages set up... Something is not adding up...

When I had my animals set up in the basement, I had to build a room in the basement so the ambient air in the room where the cages were never got lower than 80 degrees...