Best Ways to Heat a Rack?

[WarriorPrincess90]

Hi again everyone!

I'm just curious about the best ways to heat a rack, and how one goes about monitoring this? I know a thermostat is the way to monitor, but how does that work exactly? How do you monitor every tub to make sure the heats/humidity are right in every one?

This may be a silly question, but I'm still in tanks and would like to eventually go to tubs in a rack. Tanks are a pain to keep heat/humidity correct. I also intend to vastly expand my collection once I'm out of college, so it'll be necessary. I'm just unsure of how the whole rack process works. And I know everyone keeps saying racks and tubs are way better. So I finally decided just to ask.

Thanks in advance everybody!

[Royal Hijinx]

From my understanding, as long as the drawers in the rack are all the same size and setup, you monitor one drawer with the thermostat and let it adjust accordingly.

[ShelbyCraig]

Flexwatt on a thermostat.
different lengths of heat tape will be different temps but they'll generally be around the same.

[EverEvolvingExotics]

Flexwatt on a thermostat.
different lengths of heat tape will be different temps but they'll generally be around the same.

If you hook up a piece of 3" heat tape to the same thermostat as an 11" piece of flexwatt the temps will be drastically different. I personally use belly and back heat since I don't have a heated room. I use back heat to raise the ambient temps and belly heat to provide the hot spots. Back and belly heat both get a dedicated thermostat.

Edit: I forgot to add in the placement of the thermostat probe is how the correct temperature is reached. I always place my probe directly on the heat tape in the most central location. So if I'm setting up a rack with 5 tubs I will place the back heat probe directly on the heat tape next to the 3rd tub.