Red compact fluorescent bulb for night?

[Fortune]

I asked my gf to pick up a night bulb for my snake and she bring this home?...i haven't opened it yet i want to make sure it isn't harmful first

[Raven01]

It won't be "harmful". I'm not sure if the spectrum of red is right or not, watch your snake and see.
Since I use a white bulb as part of my habitat heating for ambient I matched the wattage in an incandescent infrared and just set it a bit higher to let the temp drop a couple degrees while allowing me to watch my snakes cruise their terrarium especially the nights before feeding days.

[Fortune]

It won't be "harmful". I'm not sure if the spectrum of red is right or not, watch your snake and see.
Since I use a white bulb as part of my habitat heating for ambient I matched the wattage in an incandescent infrared and just set it a bit higher to let the temp drop a couple degrees while allowing me to watch my snakes cruise their terrarium especially the nights before feeding days.

kk thanks for the info...

[The Serpent Merchant]

If you are wanting it to help heat the cage it isn't going to do much. For night viewing it probably is going to be too bright. Overall I would just return it.

[Pythonfriend]

a red compact fluorescent sounds quite bright. sounds like what certain people use to give the whole room a certain red shine.... must have been awkward for your GF to buy it

i mean, even small CFLs give off a lot of light, and for a small habitat it may be too much. also they get so hot that you can barely touch them.

i would scale it down one or two orders of magnitude and go for a nice red LED, a 0.1 to 0.5 watt LED should be enough for you to see whats going on in the enclosure.

if you are not a hardware hacker that can work with a single LED, you can cheaply get some USB lamps, for reading or to illuminate the area around the laptop. and you can cheaply get a power supply adapter that gives you some powered USB slots. Basically with USB you can set up a tiny little secondary 5 volt grid which can be useful for some smallscale silent ventilation or some lights.
OMG i think i just found a new purpose for USB coffe mug warmers an alternative way to keep your snakes warm in case of a power outage..... via laptop.

[Fortune]

yeah i ended up returning it and purchasing a 75 watt zilla night bulb from petco....Thanks for all the info!