A warning for all reptile keepers.

[Duzzie]

Please all reptile keepers read this post. I would hate to hear of anyone going through what Busybee and I have been through in the past 2 days.

We keep all our reptiles in our spare beedroom with a normal room heater to keep the room at a constant 25 degrees. Then we used individual heat mats and lamps on mat stats to get each tank temperature right. When we got home from work yesterday, I went into the reptile room and the temperature in the room was over 40 degrees. I checked over all the animals and found most of them were dead. Below is a list of what survived and what we lost.

What appears to have happened is a malfunction of the themostat on the heater in the room. We had a normal electric room heater which has a built in thermostat. It seems that the thermostat on the room heater failed to cut off at 25 degrees and kept pumping out the heat. I have no idea why the thermostat failed, it had been working fine for 2 months since we moved house. At 45 degrees the animals didn't stand a chance. All the ones that survived were at floor level so must have been that little bit cooler.

The circuit breaker made no difference, as it was the thermostat that failed, as far as the circuit breaker was aware, the heater was working fine. It would only be if their was an electrical fault that the circuit breaker would have kicked in.

The lesson for everyone is, if you use a heater to heat your reptile room, please dont rely on the built in thermostat alone. Use a second thermostat, with the correct power rating for the room heater, as a backup. That way if the built in thermostat fails, you have a second thermostat to prevent the temps getting too high. I would hate to hear of anyone else going through what we have. Hopefully our experience will help avoid others going through the same. Busybee and me are absolutely devestated by this loss, we are just numb. As you can see from the lists below, our collection has been all but whiped out.

Losses
Poppy blue tongue skink.
2 cresties,
Mizzy female bearded dragon,
red tegu,
Slinky red ridgetailed monitor,
Snowie snow corn,
Suki strawberry snow corn,
Red hypobloodred corn
Banana and Bananaman hurricaine butter motleys
Hunnee and Casper the ghost motleys,
Mysti lavender stripe corn,
Buttons and Axel normal cube/stripe het lavenders.
2 african house snakes,
Smoothie brazilian rainbow boa,
Fishie royal python,
Nutmeg ghost het bloodred
Pecan coral snow het bloodred
Hazelnut hypo het bloodred
male and female reverse oketee corns,
their 2 babies corns
Huffee, Hogmanay and baby the western hognoses
Timmy and Jimmy mexican red knee and avic metallica,
small mexican red knee,
p. irmina Tarantulas x 2
p. striata Tarantulas x 3
Wooly curly haired tarantula
Monster salmon pink Tarantula x1
Madam green bottle blue Tarantula x1
Girly a. seemani x1.

What we have left after the tragedy :
Draca and Kizzy the beardies.
Nyoga and Dumpling colombian rainbow boas,
Walnut and Pinky hypo lavenders corns.
Amelia amel het snow & bloodred corn.
Sandi Kenyan sand boa

Sorry for being the bearer of such sad news.

Duzzie

[kelly]

omg i am so so sorry i cant imagine what you must be feeling. thank you for sharing this with us i hope people will read this and learn.

must of been hard to come on and tell everyone

[Nerys]

good lord, thats a loss and a half..

very sorry to hear this, same happened to my mate rachel not that many years back...

N

[rachel132002]

Originally Posted by Nerys

good lord, thats a loss and a half..

very sorry to hear this, same happened to my mate rachel not that many years back...

N

Yes it did suck big time so belive me I know the feeling, i have a sticky on livefood forums when the same happened to me in my shed 2years back, i still feel sick thinking about it.

So if ya wanna chat add me on msn or somethin rachel132002@hotmail.com

Rach

thats terrible news ..

[SiUK]

as I said over on AP Gareth, im really sorry for your loss, I cant believe it, stay strong mate.

[Scales and Fangs]

Oh my god, what a sad sad thing to happen, I bet your are heart renched. I cant imagine what you guys must be going through.

I'm lost for words, sorry.

My thoughts are with you guys

Rob.

[linda.t]

so sorry for your loss.

[Diablo]

So sorry to hear of your losses guys

[the-reptile-mafia]

I feel soo sorry for you, soo much money lost out on, but i suppose the grief is more of a worry.
I know this probably wont make you laugh but at leats the food bill will be cut (trying to cheer you up :/ )