Quote:
Originally Posted by razeraze
My biggest dislike with under cage heating is it does not work at all in a tall (over 3')cage, it also can lead to hot spots making the entire base warm while the air temperature is still cool.
Again the important part is maintaining proper temps it does not matter what the cage looks like as long as you get the gradient you want. For me personally that is a gradient of 30-40 degrees difference between the cool retreat and the hottest basking site.
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What? None of that makes sense for any snake species I know of. First, there is a clear advantage for "belly heat" in aiding in digestion. Overhead heat helps but doesn't quite complete the job effectively. While it's true that there's no heat pads out in the woods for snakes to lay on, the earth rotates and so the sun is constantly changing positions providing various angles that the sun's rays will strike the surface that the snake chooses to bask on. Also, as the snake's body shades a particular area enough to cool it off, it can simply move a bit and get a new hot spot. If you can rig up a light that revolves around your cage and provide a basking area roughly the size of a small parking lot, you can get away with just overhead heat. Your personal dislike for
UTH sounds more like just not wanting to rethink your choice of cage building materials. Use the right stuff and it works quite well. Your snake's health and well being is quite a bit more important than what you prefer.
UTH won't make the entire base hot if you don't cover the entire bottom of the cage with it. It's true, they don't heat tall cages well alone but if for some reason you are housing a ground dwelling snake in a tall cage,
UTH will allow for a better basking area without having to use super hot bulbs,
CHE or heat panels which when coming from overhead in a tall cage will evenly distribute the heat that makes it's way to the bottom, killing off any chance of a good gradient...so don't use tall cages for ground dwelling reptiles unless you can provide shelving which actually makes it more like multi leveled housing..so that each shelf or floor area becomes separate units and the animal has free range to choose what level to go to. There are plenty of ways to set this up effectively
Some species do way better without lighted cages. Ball pythons in particular flourish 1000 times better with just belly heat and no overhead lighting or overhead heat of any kind. They don't really need much heat anyway. Same with most colubrids, pitvipers, rainbow boas...the list goes on. Know your species and what it requires. There is no one rule that covers all.
30 to 40 degrees gradient? If the hot side is 88, you have a cool side between 48 and 58? Remember that ambient temps are what is most important. If you are going just by surface temps...maybe but surface temps aren't what is generally referred to when people talk about gradients. Ambient temps really only need to range from 10 to 15 or 20 degrees gradient for most species. Please be careful how you word things like this because anyone reading might misinterpret and set up a 40 degree ambient gradient...if that's even possible without hooking up an A/C unit on one end and a space heater on the other.
