I’m moving some racks around and might need to setup a temporary rack and wondering what’s the best way.
I need to house 20 tubs for a few days up to 1 week.
I was wondering if I could stack 12qt containers 2 high with lids and weave heat tape under the first row then back around so it goes over the first row to heat the one above. This would make it so the bottom tubs would have heat below and above and the ones on top would have it just on the bottom. Would this create too much heat on the first bottom row? I’ll be using 3” heat tape and a thermostat?
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As someone moving racks around… that’s a pain. honestly your situation is much less ideal. I hope it’s not something that needs to happen at all.
I think you do run the risk of the bottom row being too warm.
If they can be on a shelf or something to give them space and a way to delete some of the direct heat to the top of the bottom row that may work better… like a small shelf.Heck, just a couple of bricks and a wood board or something.
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Hello @burton182 and welcome to the community! You are at the right place to get some great advice and you now not only will have experienced and knowledgeable people here to give advice, you also found a civil, respectful and welcoming community that is happy to help out! There is a plethora of information on just about any topic you can think of.
Could you elaborate on how many rows you have on your rack and how many tubs in total you’ll have? It’s probably just me but I can’t figure out if you mean you will only have 2 tubs with lids stacked on top of each other or if you would have those 2 stacked tubs plus another “column” of 2 tubs in the same row. My initial thought was that it might be too much for that bottom row. Do you have a hard timeline where you have to move your animals to the temp housing, or do you have time to do a trial run without them in the tubs in case your idea doesn’t work as expected? Could you do side heating instead of under/over the tubs? Maybe using heat cable ckuld provide the flexibility to heat the racks? Just throwing out some possibilities but I just can’t visualize exactly what would provide the best solution. Also, is ambient temperature setup as a supplemental source possible?
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What species are you housing? For most snakes, as long as they’re not digesting and your temps aren’t literally freezing, they’ll be fine without extra heat for that amount of time. Just don’t feed until they’re back on heat.
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I would use tubs with lids then bungee cords to be safe. I would skip the heat tape and just heat the whole room to 80-82. Should be fine for a week that way.
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All great suggestions! And I totally agree with @armiyana about the bottom rows getting too warm or if not the tops won’t be warm enough. If you positively need heat because you can’t keep the whole room warm or these snakes are going to be in this temporary system long enough to need to eat it may be easier to stack them vertically and do back heat for the time being. I know it’s not as efficient as belly heat but it would give each tub more or less even heat for the time being. Make sure it is sturdy and I would recommend not placing the first one directly on the ground as it will be a lot cooler then the rest if you do.
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