Hi. My 2 year old ball python is about 2.5ft - 3ft long and is living
in a wooden viv with glass panel doors on the front. the viv is about
4 ft in length, 1.5 ft deep and 3 ft high. i have a lamp attached to
the ceiling to the right of the viv for heating with a 60watt
incandescent bulb in and on the right side of the tank at the back, i
have a large heat mat(inside the viv). Well, i worry about using the
lamp because i worry the snake will burn himself on it, so i want to
provide heating solely from heat mats. i want to put another heatmat
on the right side of the viv and one on the floor, so that there are 3
heat mats in the hot area (right half of the viv). Is this
sufficient/too much/too little heating? Are heat mats 100% (or near
enough) safe? I would use the lamp for heating but i have found him
climbing on it and worry he would do so if it was on and burn himself.


All ideas and comments welcome.

===============
Gremlin_Dude

I firmly believe that snakes need belly heat for proper digestion & use
heat mats as my sole source of heat for my snake vivariums. However I
control their ambient temps by adjusting the herp rooms' temps. Many
people don't have the convience of having rooms solely devoted to
herpetoculture. If I didn't have a herp rooms I'd use another method of
heat in addition to the heat mats. In my experience heat mats haven't
raised the vivarium's ambient temps significantly but obviously much
depends on the room's ambient temps. snake lady

r. j. salvi

My experience has been exactly the same...the vivarium temp doesn't increase
much, just the localized heat. What I do to "regulate" heating pad temps is
to use pieces of cardboard inside the viv, directly over the pad and then
newspaper as a substrate over the top of that.

Also, it's very important that there's air flow on the bottom of the viv
(raise it up a half inch if need be) so temps don't get too hot. No air
flow -- IOW, an enclosed space -- can dramatically raise the localized temps
and burn the snakes.

--
Robert J. Salvi, Ambiance Acoustics
http://www.ambianceacoustics.com
San Diego, CA USA
(858) 485-7514

grainne gillespie

I use both heat light and heat mat for my royal.
I was told when I bought him that royals need a heat light for basking.
I don't think there's much risk of my Jasper being burnt as he seems to
spend 99.99% of his time in the tank curled up under his wood hide

Taking him out from under his hide = Jaspie rapidly sliding back under the
hide

When I used a hollow log hide with him I occasionally used to find him lying
on the ledge under the lid of the tank (only times he used to go near the
light), but he got too big for the log, it was hard to get him out when he
was curled up inside it and I started having to poke him in the side from
one end to take him move to the other end, that was before I discovered it
was quicker to shake him out.

You may be able to get mesh housing for the bulb to stop your royal coming
in contact with it