Do i REALLY need a thermostat?

[wardy11]

your not from birmingham are you

[Caz]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

Guess you need lower wattage mats if you want to run them without thermostats

Right, before I went to work I plugged in a 7 watt heat mat, placed on a cold floor. I placed a rubber toy snake on the heat mat. No thermostat. I have just measured the temperatures with an accurate IR point and shoot type thermometer.

58.8c - 138f on the surface UNDER the toy snake.
48.33c - 119f on the mat which is NOT covered.

Both lethal temperatures to snakes.
Use a correctly placed thermostat.

[Caz]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

I've just measured the temp in my boa viv, they have a 4' heat mat on the floor with a few layers of newspaper taped over it. It was 94f direct, 2 inches high it was 84f. And thats with a big heatmat, let alone the little ones.

94f is 1 degree of causing damage to the central nervous system.
The boa doesn't hover 2" above the substrate.
Sorry to sound harsh but its the welfare of the snake i'm concerned with.
If the boa urinates on the substrate and this leaks onto the terminal block then this may short and start to burn along the edge of the mat. It has happened. Even with a 3amp fuse in the plug it will not blow. You may lose the snake, your house and your life.

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by Caz

94f is 1 degree of causing damage to the central nervous system.
The boa doesn't hover 2" above the substrate.
Sorry to sound harsh but its the welfare of the snake i'm concerned with.
If the boa urinates on the substrate and this leaks onto the terminal block then this may short and start to burn along the edge of the mat. It has happened. Even with a 3amp fuse in the plug it will not blow. You may lose the snake, your house and your life.

boas are heavy snakes, should really have ceramics on pulse stats, with guards, not heat mats.

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

As I said in my inital post, its my experience that heatmats are certainly not hot enough to burn, even without newspaper between them and the snake, let alone with substrate on top. Obviously I have to take you at your word when you say you received 135f temperatures from a single heatmat over which was newspaper and substrate - I personally don't believe it, but I won't start a crusade about it.

And neither did I recommend a cage with just a heatmat, on the contrary I said they need both, you say they need just the bulb (which is also true).

And where did I say the basking point needs to be far too hot, and the cool end far too cold? A corn snake would be fine with a cool end of 80f, and a basking point of 90f, in the middle of the viv it will be around 85f. In my experience these temperatures are easily maintained without the use of a thermostat.

sorry am just reading through the thread. corns, warm end 83 - 85. royals 90 - 95.

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

All I can say is a heatmat of mine has never, could never, and will never omit that much heat I can keep my hand directly on there without any pain or discomfort, so I don't see why my snakes would get hurt with a few sheets of newspaper in between as well (which mellow it enough to just feel a nice warmth coming through). I can only assume that the heatmats are either a cheap make or faulty.

Either that or my reptiles have been living on borrowed time for the past several years.

i wouldnt say 'could never', i tried the exact same experiment just last week, tub and unstatted mat, no snake in tub. floor of the tub reached 120%. it was rising but i had to go out and switched it off. if your snakes burrow under the substrate and paper and reach the mat, they will burn if it is not statted.

[Ssthisto]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

All I can say is a heatmat of mine has never, could never, and will never omit that much heat I can keep my hand directly on there without any pain or discomfort, so I don't see why my snakes would get hurt with a few sheets of newspaper in between as well (which mellow it enough to just feel a nice warmth coming through).

Out of curiosity, do you know what the temperature of a human hand is?

If it feels "nicely warm" to you... then it's quite possibly too hot for the snake. Your body temperature is 98.6 degrees (core temp), although your hands may be as cool as 88 degrees. A heat mat shouldn't feel more than lukewarm or slightly cool to the touch if you're a human.

If you're right and "your heat mats could never get that hot" please tell us what brand you're using. I have used Microclimate mats, Habistat mats and Cobra mats, and ALL of them produce on-top-of-substrate temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit when used as per the manufacturer's instructions (less than a centimetre of substrate) but without a thermostat. The Cobra mat produced the lowest surface temperatures - I never measured that one over 110 - and the Habistat mats regularly exceed 140 if they aren't thermostatically controlled.

And yeah, I would use a ceramic bulb setup for heavy-bodied boids in vivariums personally - much less risk of them peeing in the electrics or thermally blocking the mat with their body. Sure, it's more expensive for initial setup and you need a thermostat for them too, but it's worth it for the peace of mind!

[charlesthompson]

Originally Posted by Blackecho

Like you say, its the shops that are to blame, not many 'complete' starter kits come with stats.

apart from ours.

excellent thread

[charlesthompson]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

I have an external thermometer with hand held probe. I have a digital Hygrometer in the same fasion.

When I measure temps I measure the basking point, off-basking point (if the basking point is on a shelf), the hgihest shelf in the viv, and the cool spot. All are spot on, and always have been, and I've never used a stat.

Heatmats I've always had newspaper on, and in the case with smaller snakes and lizards, a substrate as well. Even if, which they don't, a heatmat could reach a surface temperature of 140f with paper on top, that is still nowhere near enough to burn or discomfort the snake, it would simply mean they spend shorter times in the basking spot. Try and remember that if left permantly in the sun temps would soon reach above 130f in many hotter places of the world. Reptiles know what temperature they want to be, and they won't come to harm providing they have a cooler spot, or can come into contact with burning temperatures. They have built-in thermostats, they don't need to be molly-coddled.

too cheap to buy a stat, simple.

Most snakes if indeed all are by the very nature of the sun heliotherms meaning that they have theirs 'thermostats' on their backs not their bellies, which is why it is so impartant to have control over a heat source which comes from below.

[tinkrebel]

To be honest I know that me posting this will result in criticism but I've been keeping snakes for 15 years, so from before the internet and a huge increase in the amount of reptile owners.

When I brought my first corn snake I was told a faunarium and a heat mat was all I needed, no mention of a thermostat. A few months later I brought my first royal, again was told I needed a wooden viv and a heat mat however this time I would need a light fitting and a 40 watt normal household bulb (no mention of a guard) to raise the temps during the daytime, and at night just turn the light off. Also kept the corn this way when it went into a viv. So I admit to having vivs for 10+ years with just a heat mat and a 40 watt (unguarded) bulb for both royals and corns, I also used this method when I kept bull, pine and gopher snakes.

I used this method for the last 14 years, and it was only Dec 2007, when I was looking on the internet for the new address of the shop where I normally brought my frozen food, that I came across this site. I had never looked on the internet for any information regarding the care of my reptiles before, as I'd never run into any problems using the methods I had been using for the last 10+ years. All the information I knew about snakes had been from either shops or books and I'd had no reason to doubt it.

I'm not saying that the people who have had their snakes burnt by heat mats are lying or wrong, but I do appreciate there are people like myself who have used a particular method for years with no problems and find it hard to accept that this is now not 'acceptable'. Just because I never used stats with my heat mats does not mean I was trying to save money or not looking after my snakes, it just means that the information available now perhaps wasn't back then and like most things unless something goes wrong, you don't fix it.

I do use stats now, because I switched to ceramic heaters and not heatmats anymore after reading about the benefits of ceramics on this site.