Setting up UVB questions

[Caitlin]

I offer UVB to my snakes, but I'll tell you that learning how to do it correctly and safely was a learning curve for sure, at least for me. I also apologize in advance if I dump too much information on you here.

I love that you are considering offering UVB to your snake. But here's the bad news: with an enclosure that is only 15" tall, the 6% Arcadia bulb is too strong. You won't be able to set it up at a safe basking distance.

If your store offers a 'Shadedweller' arcadia UVB bulb or a T8, you could use that. The T8 would be the safer option; I'll explain that in a second, but either would work.

The Shadedweller is designed for crepuscular snakes (active at dawn and dusk) like Ball Pythons, and for those that engage in cryptic basking - they aren't likely to just sit in full-on sun, but they may expose part of their body to filtered sunlight for basking.

The Shadedweller will say it's 7% but the numbers are confusing, because the UVB output is moderated by the type of reflectors that Arcadia uses in the setup for their bulbs. The percent just refers to how much of the total output of the lamp is within the UVB portion of the spectrum. The Shadedweller is a standard output lamp running at only 8 watts and only covering 12" across compared to 24 watts across 2 feet. So while 1% more of its total output is in the UVB spectrum compared to your 6% bulb, it is putting out far less power.

You also need to take substrate depth into account along with the presence of any branches/climbing options, as you need to know how close your snake can potentially get to the UVB lamp. Long story short, if you use a 10.0 with no reflector and with a cage guard, your snake could get about 4" from the lamp without being over exposed. If you use a Shadedweller with a cage guard, your snake can't get closer than 6" away from the lamp without being overexposed. So the 10.0 (T8) would be safer. Personally I would not put UVB in a 15" tall enclosure, but if I did, I would opt for the 10.0. I can share the math on all of that if you are interested.

Also - and I am NOT AT ALL saying this in a patronizing way, because getting all of this stuff sorted out in my head was not easy at first. It definitely took awhile and I am still learning - if all of this feels overwhelming, I would hold off on setting up UVB in your enclosure until you take some time to do some reading/research and get more comfortable with all of these parameters and what they mean.

The science is crystal clear that offering UVB as an option to our snakes has real benefits. But it's not something we can just jump into, and the snake won't suffer while you take the time you need to investigate all of this.

Editing to add: Providing UVB can be challenging on the budget. You need to replace the bulbs roughly every 6-8 months. And to be safe, you need to have a solarimeter on hand to measure UVB output; solarimeters aren't cheap but they are an important tool.