Quote Originally Posted by MontyAndMelissa View Post
Somehow, while I was gone tonight, my ceramic heating element got turned off. No idea how this happened, but I got home and his ambient temp is 64.8! How do I warm it up? He is moving, (thank god) and I just got a secondary lamp to plug in, (unfortunately this one gives off light AND heat. I got the element working again (it wasn't unplugged, and the power strip was on???)

Please help. I need quick reptile friendly ways to warm up his tank, that don't require me going to the store (all of which are closed until Friday!)

What kind of ceramic heater did you have and what temp did you have it set at? I have a lasko ceramic space heater and I had it set at 83 (we were having a really cold spell that temperature kept the ambient temp in the enclosure at 80). Well one night I walked into the snake room to check on the snake and realized the thermostat on the heater read 76 and wasn't going up. So I put my hand against the heater only to find that it was blowing cold air. Turns out there is a built-in safety mechanism that causes the heating element to turn off if the internal mechanisms overheat. The remedy (according to the information manual) was to unplug the heater for at least 10 minutes, then plug it back in. Sure enough, that fixed my issue. Now I have the heater set at 78 and I have towels wrapped around my snake's enclosure to help insulate it. It has been almost a month and it hasn't overheated since then, and the ambient air temp inside the snake's enclosure hovers between 79-80.