Boa for Birthday!

[Sauzo]

Sauzo great reply as always... Can you be a little more specific on the heating if he goes with Heat Tape on a AP-T10 PVC enclose. You know I use RHP's but if he went with heat tape could you use 2? 1 on the Hot side & 1 on the cool and run it on the Herpstat 2? I was thinking maybe your idea was to run cool side tape at 80 and hot side tape at 90 so the snakes floor temp was alway correct? Also can Ali at AP have a bottom made for heat tape cutouts on both sides? If Im correct (cant really remember) my enclosures only have the installation spot on 1 side of them.
BoaBoy let me say if your turning 14 in a couple months you have done more research and invested more time in planning than 60% of the adults that join this site each day hahahahaha. Thats awesome!! Welcome to the forum. I can tell your going to become a good asset & member on this forum

As far as a enclosures Id say go with a AP-T10. (Animal Plastics T10). They are $199+ $50 shipping but I say they're the best for the money out of all the PVC Display enclosures and a Boa can live in it all its life. The Herpstat 2 ($198) can run 2 heat sources. Hot Side and Cool side... As far as Heat Tape you see that on RBI. As far as Thermometers most of us use Acurite indoor/outdoor with the probe. They are about $10. I get mine on Amazon. They can also be bought on the Acurite site, they also ship to Walmart, Lowes ect....
Welcome again. Cant wait to see what you put together.

I personally run only Flexwatt on all my AP cages and i just use the 11 inch stuff as close to the wall as i can.

If i was running a PVC cage and acutally needed to up my ambient, depending by how much, i would either run a small RHP on the warm side above the flexwatt or just run a normal size RHP and skip the flexwatt altogether. Flexwatt will do close to nothing for ambient heating unless you are stacking cages so the flexwatt from the top cage would warm the top of the bottom cage. But in a cool room, i would not want to depend on that alone. My rule of thumb is if your ambient room temp goes under 75F, then use a RHP. If it is above 76F, then use flexwatt. Of course there is stuff like oil filled room radiators set on Herpstat HPs etc. Like i said, my bottom cages on my T10/T8 stack and my T25 stack both regularly hit 77F on the cool side and both my dumerils and normal BCI sit on the cool side most of the time.

As for cutouts on AP cages. There are no actual indentations cut on the floors. There is those little routed outlines but that is it. They are on both sides too so you can set the flexwatt on either side. I stack my cages flush to each other so there is no air gap between my cages at all and its fine. Only downside is sometimes the middle cages will run a little warmer ambient temp on colder nights but only by a couple degrees.

And yeah, not sure on your cash situation but a T10 would work good. I also use T8s for my babies and T25s for my adults. My advice is always get the shelf option. It's a cheap way to add floor space as i believe in the T8 and T10, the shelves are 8 inches deep. In the T25, they are 10 inches deep. I would also get the LED lights or at the least get the routing done from them for it. Then get lights on Amazon. I love AP cages but their lights leave a lot to be desired lol. I have had 6/9 burn out on me and a 7th one is on its way out. If you read this Ali, you will be getting another call from me in a few days to beat your brow about your shabby lighting lol. Good thing is, Ali is awesome about taking care of the problem and sending out replacement lights within a day.

But anyways, go for a T10 unless the cash is strapped. If so, then get a T8. They are a bit short in height but they are still WAY better than a fish tank and will house a baby boa for a couple years.

Here is a pic of both my stacks to give you an idea.