All right. I have an animal plastics combo rack. I am using compacted cocohusk from the bricks as substrate. Im having issues with getting the belly temp consistent. I am using a herpstat 2 as the thermostat with the probe on the middle rack and a space heater for ambient. I set the tstat to 100 degrees but some of the tubs are in the right temp range, and some of them are not. Also, the tubs without snakes are in the right temp range, but the ones with snakes sometimes hit 90, but most of the time they have been in the mid 80s and some of these tubs are in the same row as each other which makes no sense. Also, If I have my space heater turn to 80 sometimes the belly heat will be too high, but if I turn it down to 79, the belly temps will be too low??? Idk if im using the herpstat wrong?? I have it set to dimming for the the heat tape. I also don’t know if I have too many holes in the tubs or not. idk if I confused everyone or not, so please ask as many questions as you need lol. I appreciate all the help!
Tubs with animals in them have the body mass of the animal to account for, along with the ability of them rearranging things so can cause different temps in tubs next to one another. Also heat tape is variable along its length (not usually dramatically so). If you have the ability to, insulating the bottom and back of the rack can help with temps being more stable. I would pull all the tubs, then check what the heat tape temp is reading with a temp gun. That way you can get a flat, unimpacted by outside influence temp reading. It’ll also show you the differences you’ll be working with level to level.
How are you measuring the temps in the tub?
Temp gun for measuring the hot spot
Do you take the temp of the substrate or are you moving it and then taking the temp of bottom?