Stuck on what to do for housing...

[sufficio]

Yep, that is the issue with plastic totes. My suggestion is getting a UTH and putting it on a thermostat ( this one set to 90). Because you having issues with ambient temps too, your going to want to get another UTH and put it on 80, that's your cool side. Another solution is to cut a hole into the lid, then putting mesh, which you can get at home depot, and glueing it to the inside of the lid so the lamp can sit on it. Any heqtspurce you have should have a thermostat. Luckily there are ones online you can get for 20 dollars. Both of mine from Amazon.

Btw binder clips are an amazing choice for clipping the sides of the bin.

Oh we do have an UTH with thermostat- we live in a cold drafty basement so without the heat lamp, the ambient temp falls way low.

Yeah we were thinking about the mesh idea- I think that honestly may just be our best bet at this point!

A cheap fix that may work is getting some dowel from a hardware store the extends over the edges of the lid. Using soldering iron or drill make holes and with zipp ties attach to the lid on outside on top giving support like ceiling beams in a house. Maybe a zipp tie every 2 or 3 inches. This could suck it up enough that the heat from lamp is a non issue and latches may work again.

Oh that's an interesting idea... Are you meaning that the lamp would sit directly on the dowels or what? The lamp is already on a suspended hook ~3 inches above the tub so I don't know if dowels above the lid would work much better than the current scenario.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!!