correct light/ heat. help

[mozz]

Hi can anybody clear up an issue i have i am soon to buy all the equipment i need to get ready for my map turtle i want. my issue is do i use a heat/uv combi bulb on the basking area or an ordinary spot lamp on basking area and a long uv tube to cover all the tank. can any one tell me the watts of the correct bulbs also. thanks

[Graham]

There is little point in using a UVB tube over the whole tank, flourescents emit precious little UVB as it is and it doesn't penetrate water very far at all, so most of it will be totally wasted.
If you want to use seperate lamps then use a 10% UVB Compact instead of a tube, use it with a reflector, and mount it alongside the spotlamp so they are both focused on the basking area.
On my small tank I use a 13W 10.0 UVB compact, for larger basking areas you could use a 26W. A 60W reflector spotlamp is generally the best one to use for heat.

A MVB (combi) is far better than seperate lamps though, it's output is much closer to natural sunlight and this will be reflected in your turts behaviour, they are quite bulky lamps though with their holders and need to be mounted around 15" above the basking area, this can be a problem depending on where your tank is because the lamp obviously needs to be suspended from something, so you need quite a bit of space above the tank.
MVBs also emit a lot of heat over a fairly large area, so the basking area needs to be quite large to enable the turts to move away and thermoregulate, in small tanks this isn't always possible.