Hi all I’m new to breeding and am looking into racks. I’m considering building it with my dad since he is an electrician and has an eye for this type of work. I’ve been reading all the how tos ,watching videos , and have been taking plans/ideas from known rack disturbers. I’m leaning towards heat cables instead of tape. any thoughts trying to start off right without spending to much capital or buying half working old racks and having to upgrade later. Lmk any thoughts help🤜🏽
Well here are some of my home made racks. You definitely dont have to kill your wallet for making some racks like these. All together it cost about 350 to make both and it has heat tape, temp regulator and everything else. There are so many different ways to go about making some and you can make some that are affordable or go all out and make some high end looking ones yourself. You can also save a little more by getting used racks like I did and slightly used racks work just as good as new ones so there is no need to shy away from them like I know some people do
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I have not seen anyone ever mention heat cables before.
Is it like the tape, but I guess, just a cable instead?
There might be a reason most people use heat tape.
Have you come across someone in a video using the cable? If so please post it!
I’d love to learn about heat cable since I’ve kicked around the idea of making racks myself.
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Yeah its basically just a cable version of heat tape. From what I’ve heard it’s harder to setup so I would just stick to heat tape, plus it has more surface area than heat cable so it would heat up a rack better than cable and there would be more how to videos to set up heat tape rather than heat cable. But in the end it’s just preference
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You can wide the heating area with foiltape and attach the cable with it under the tube. Just make U-shape round in every shelf and u got good area thre. For bigger tubes couple of U-spes is enough.
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Go to YouTube and search “Platinum morphs wire rack system”. He shows you how to turn a wire storage rack into a snake rack and he uses heat cable. I am thinking about trying his method but with the size bigger rack from lowes, so i dont have to buy 2 racks to get one. Lowes sells just the shelfs by themselves.
Vision racks are setup with heat cable,. It’s kind of nice you can run a little more or a little less where you want it. They have “clips” that hold it in place. Never used it or them personally,. I don’t know how they are for durability but Vision let’s you customize each level of the rack. So your hatchlings levels might get less where your 70s get more coiled underneath. A lot of invertebrate and bug keepers use cable to heat thier animals.