Quote Originally Posted by Snagrio View Post
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.
I see. Yeah I say that is silly. Nobody here with experience will tell you a UTH can be used alone. They certainly have their place though.