everybody should have a DIT Digital Infrared thermometer both newbs and veterans

[ejseoane]

Everybody should get a Digital Infrared thermometer , this is why . I have recently gotten back into keeping snakes , up until last Wednesday i only had a cal king that i got at a reptile show about two months ago , now i also have a pinstripe, albino , and piebald , i thought that i had my tank set up proper, and when i got my snakes i would be able to put them in a good place right away. after getting them and putting them in there cage i proceed to drive my self insane trying to make the temps correct over the next daynhalf, after many different light and thermometer and under tank pad configurations i just couldn't get it perfect , i had a digital thermometer on the warm side, probe on the floor of cage directly on top of heat pad , and a acurite with the probe on the cold side on the floor, and the base on the floor in the middle, i got things to the best i could I THOUGHT, then i saw a post on here about Digital Infrared thermometer some people call it a heat gun, so i found one and bought it , thank god i did, now everything is dialed in almost perfect, and its much easier to get a quick accurate reading anywhere in the cage, of the snake itself, thawed food , or anything . I think digital thermometers are somewhat accurate depending on what your trying to get the temp of ,my opinion is that they are terrible at accurately giving the temp of the surface of something , an example from my personal experience is this , right now i still have that same digi therm with the probe on the warm side floor directly on the pad and it reads 81! oh damn , my hot spot should be about 90-95 i need to turn that heat pad up right? wrong if i use the DIT and measure the temp in the same exact spot it gives me 91, so if i didnt know any better i might try to turn up the heat to make the digi read warmer witch would probly slowly fry my snakes and kill them. I would recommend one of the DIT's to everybody, they don't cost much, not nearly as much as it cost to replace a snake .