Quote Originally Posted by emiebeth View Post
You have a UTH and overhead bulbs? You really only need one or the other...and the UTH is the best method because they need the belly heat for digestion. So long as you're controlling it with a thermostat, you can get the perfect temperature with just that, and it also would drastically help with humidity. Overhead heating sucks the humidity from the enclosure =)
I'm afraid I have to disagree with a couple of points here. A UTH is frequently not enough to heat a whole enclosure. Especially a large glass one. Supplemental heat from overhead is usually required. In a shallow plastic tub surrounded on three sides by the walls of the rack, a UTH is usually sufficient. But in a 55 gal glass tank, no way that will work unless the OP keeps his house at 80 degrees all the time.

The second point is the insistence I see more and more often from folks that BP's have to have belly heat. They don't. So long as the heat source warms the substrate and keeps the overall ambient temps in the proper ranges, they don't care where the heat comes from.

It IS true that overhead lamps suck humidity from the air...and that is an issue that almost all glass-tank keepers must deal with and overcome. But in any typical house, SOME supplemental heat will be needed in a glass tank, even if you had UTH's on both sides.