RHP smell!!

[Stormy]

We recently ordered two Animal Plastic T-10s for our snakes; cages are put together and ready to go, sealant is cured. However the RHPs smell to high heaven! Ordered them from Reptile Basics and they've been on now for about 2 weeks; tanks still smell like warm plastic.

How do we get rid of the smell so we can move our snakes into the tanks? We've taken the doors off and let them run (on the thermostat) and it seems better but once we put the doors back on a few hours later the smell is back.

Should we unplug them from the thermostat and run them to help burn off whatever is causing the smell?

We'd really like to use our new tanks

[Ax01]

i'm interested in this too. i'll probably get another snake and will be doing a tub set-up but concerned about the fresh plastic smell. how do you get rid of the smell? does the smell do anything to the snake like make it nauseous, etc?

[JoshSloane]

What kind of sealant did you use?

[D1C]

I didn't have a smell with my RHP... What does it smell like?

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[JoshSloane]

My thinking is that its not from the RHP itself, but rather from a sealant in the pvc cage. Usually when you seal a cage with something like polyurethane there is a ton of outgassing that occurs once the RHP turns on.

[Stormy]

My thinking is that its not from the RHP itself, but rather from a sealant in the pvc cage. Usually when you seal a cage with something like polyurethane there is a ton of outgassing that occurs once the RHP turns on.

I"ll have to look when I get home but it's the sealant that Animal Plastics send with their cages. But I also read that RHP's can outgas as well so not really sure which one is the culprit. I just know we don't want to put our snakes in there at the moment.

[JoshSloane]

I would bet the majority of the smell is from the sealant. Take the rhp off the thermostat and let it run full blast in the enclosure. It will ramp up the rate of getting rid of the smell

[jclaiborne]

I don't know about reptile basics RHPs but it may be worth giving them a call, when I had my Helix RHP they actually told me to run it at full blast out of the cage for a week in a well ventilated area to let it completely off gas...

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[Mr. Misha]

Are you sure it isn't the PVC enclosure that you're smelling? I have 4 Reptile Basics RHPs that are different sizes and none of them had any plastic smell.

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[Smitty33]

Just a thought, the sealant may require a certain time to cure before heat is applied. If the sealant hasn't had time to cure and then exposed to the heat it may not allow it to cure properly. Could swear I read somewhere that you need to allow the sealant to cure for a couple days before you crank on the RHP.