Quote Originally Posted by KMG View Post
Don't like UTHs? They prefer the RHPs? Or what?

I have a oil filled heater for my main heat source in my snake room but each cage does have either a over head heat bulb, RHP, or UTH for a hotspot. I have some very nice ProProducts RHPs in my large cages but hardly ever run them as I just don't need to. Even during the bad freeze we had last year I didn't turn them on and everything was good. Once you get to a larger number having a designated room with a main heater is much easier to work.
This is the message they like to spam whenever the topic of heat mats comes up:

Heat mats do work for keeping some herps alive. However, they are highly inefficient heaters, and they are not generally recommended as primary heat sources. Heat mats work by heating up a surface that they are touching (which is why they can't be used on the side of a tank), but they lack the ability to raise ambient (air) temperatures, which leads to an unnatural shift in temperature between the warm spot and the rest of the enclosure. This also means that heat mats cannot create a good temperature gradient across the enclosure. Additionally, they only produce IR-C, which only heats the surface of your pet. This type of heating is less efficient, meaning your pet needs to stay on it for longer, and it is not similar to the heat from the sun that they would get in the wild (IR-A and IR-B).


I can agree on the ambient temperature thing, learned that firsthand. But they flat out say heat mats are bad PERIOD which is just silly.