What do you use for heating and lighting

[JMurphy97]

Right now I have mine in a 29 gallon with a zoo med 100 watt basking spot lamp on one side of the cage. This zoo med catalog has a chart of different reptiles and what you should use and all that. It says for boas and ball pythons to use a ceramic heat emitter or UTH heat pad for the daytime temp to be 82-92F. Now that's easy to do. But the thing is if it stays on 24 hours to keep it warm throughout the night how do you get it to cool down the couple degrees? I read that the temp needs to fall to about 70'sF or your animal will get heat stressed? So I'm asking what you use for your own.

	Under Tank Heater Under Tank Heater

[Nexus]

I use a thermostat (pulse Prop) that I feed the reverse side of the circuit from my time switch so that when the light goes out the feed to the night time drop on the thermostat goes live and drops the temperature by a preset amount. The amount of drop is adjustable.

Cheers
Nick

[MED04]

I may have missed this from a previous thread, but what kind of animal do you have? I know this post is under "Misc. Pythons", but that still doesn't narrow it down for me

[JMurphy97]

I have a ball python.

[telefrag]

I keep heaters on a timer and shut them off at night.

thats the easiest way I know to drop the temp.

[gjmccag]

i have my BP in a 29 with a 100w watt heater and the way that i control it right now is that i switch to a 50w at night. Just buy the bulb and a fixture from home depot and switch it when you go to bed. It works great for me.

	Ball Python The Ball Python (Python regius), also known as the Royal Python, is a ground dwelling snake native to the savannahs and rain forests in western Africa, predominatly the countries of Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

[JMurphy97]

Does the thermostat allow it to drop at say 10 p.m. and then raise the temp at 10 a.m. back up to where it should be during the day?

[brownsfan222]

just do what gjmccag said but put them both on a timer

[Nexus]

The problem with just using a bulb on a timer is that it takes no account of the ambient temperature in the room. A 100w bulb is probably fine some of the time but if ambient temperature in the room rises then their is a risk of over heating conversely at night with a 50W of under heating. For safety all heating should be controlled via a thermostat.

Cheers
Nick

[telefrag]

here are weather averages for a region in Ghana that is in Ball python habitat (with rainfall avg at the end)
keeping in mind they stay in burrows that probably are pretty level in temps varying 10-20 degrees from the surface temps.
something to ponder when wondering if your snakes are getting too cold at night, when a very likely scenario is , they are staying to WARM at night.
many snakes need temp variances to maintain certain bio rythms, when we keep it unnaturally warm 24/7 its bound to affect them somehow.

January 92.7� F 67.3� F 0.30 in
February 95.0� F 70.9� F 1.10 in
March 94.1� F 72.5� F 3.60 in
April 91.0� F 72.5� F 4.90 in
May 88.9� F 72.0� F 6.20 in
June 85.1� F 70.3� F 6.30 in
July 82.2� F 69.6� F 3.80 in
August 81.7� F 69.3� F 3.50 in
September 83.7� F 69.3� F 6.90 in
October 86.9� F 69.6� F 5.10 in
November 89.6� F 70.0� F 1.20 in
December 90.0� F 67.5� F 0.40 in

[JMurphy97]

Yea I don't want it too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter or too cold at night.

[Nexus]

I agree that you don't want to keep them to warm or conversely to cold and in a perfect world we would have computers rigged up running the heating to simulate a day / night light and heat cycle to closely match the natural habitat. But I unfortunately the best I can do is use a thermostat. This has the unfortunate effect of flat lining the temperature within the hysterisis range of the thermostat. In my opinion this is preferable to the heat rising uncontrollably when the room that is housing the snake rises to 30/34 degrees celcius in my case on hot summer days without a thermostat on my tanks the heat inside the vivariums would have killed my snakes before I return home.

I was not implying any temperature range in my post just pointing out that for safety reasons a thermostat should be used to control any heating device.

Cheers
Nick