Reptile Basics 41qt

[gwakeley1]

I found a guy local to me selling a 4 row high rack for $175. Now it says it has 3 rows of 4in heat tape, is that too much for adult ball pythons or should i keep it how it is? I have plenty of time to make adjustments of needed

[Royal Hijinx]

That is a good price.

Do you mean it had a total of 12" of heat tape per level? That is a bit much, but when hooked to a proper thermostat it should be fine. 41qt tubs are pretty long, so there is still room for the sake to move to the front if it likes.

If you find that when you get your hot spot up to temp that the ambients are too high, I am sure you can remove one or two of the rows and be fine. I am having my AP FB70 racks built for one row of 4" THG, and think that will be plenty.

[gwakeley1]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. After i moved out of my parents house a couple years ago i couldnt take my snakes with me so i gave them away. Now im looking into getting them again but i want to get my housing and everything else together before i actually purchase the snakes. I want to start with a couple bigger females but thats neither here nor there. I have another question. The person selling it to me says it comes with a zoo-med thermostat but from what i remember people perfer Helix's or Rancos. Would a Rannco thermostat be able to support the four tubs do you know?

[Royal Hijinx]

Ranco will be OK, just remember it is on/off vs proportional. If you are going to be running all that heat tape, I would really lean towards a proportional to prevent short spikes in such a large amount of heat tape. Remember you will only be able to monitor one of those rows of heat tape with your probe.

With that said, I prefer Herpstats over all others, but you really cannot go wrong with Helix or VE as well.