Temp Gun

[comaplata]

Alright, I'm still having a problem getting my temps up. If I leave the water bowl in the cage the humidity hits 80% in one day so I have to take it out. That's another question for a later time. My problem is, I have the UTH on a dimmer. I have a therm with probe in cage, under paper on top of the UTH. I been keeping it a steady 105. There is another heat pad stuck to the lid. My temp will stay between 82-85. I borrowed a friends beat up #$%^&#$%^&#$%^& temp gun and it said directly ontop of the pad was mid 80. So I'm stopping at tool store on my way home to get a new temp gun. How hot is too hot for that UTH? And any suggestions on dropping humidity without dropping heat? Thanks...

[comaplata]

When I say how hot is too hot, I mean what temp should bottom of cage be, without burning my snake?

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[Nehushtan]

i don't have an answer for this but I have a similar question for whoever responds -- what is the goal of UTH? In other words, is the goal to literally just provide belly heat equal to your hot side target temps, for instance, or is it also suppose raise the air temperature some (or should air temps be regulated entirely by heat lamps or some other heat source?).

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[VexalUntil]

The UTH temp depends on the substrate. YOu said it's on newspaper, so I wouldn't have the UTH more than 90F. If there was an inch or so of mulch/aspen/etc than you can bump it higher.

Reptile Basics makes an outstanding temp gun for about $50. I've had mine for almost 2 years and it still has the batteries it came with and I've used it quite alot!

Nehushtan - IMO the goal of a UTH is to provide belly heat and minimal affect to ambient air temp. From my experience the pad has to be pretty hot (or the volume of the container very low, think shoebox) to have a great affect on the ambient air temp. Additionally the UTH will usually raise the temp in the cage about 5-10 degrees or so above the room temp.

But really it also depends on how you have the UTH setup. If you have lots of open space under it, then you'll loose a lot of the heat. If you have a stack of cages and all the UTHs are lined up on one side then it creates a better system and you have heat from teh top and bottom.

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[Sliding Scales]

That's why I do not use UT heaters. I had a big apple (stick on) adjustable heating pad and even at its lowest setting it was at 95 degrees. I had bedding over that, but that is not a solution either as if my snake would push to the floor it would have been right on the glass. This was when I used terrariums, and so what I did was line the bottom of the cage with cork and ditched the UTH. The cork insulated the snake from the cold glass, and since there was no longer a cold sheet of glass, there was no reason for the UTH. My Boa loved the change.

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