Is anyone utilizing room temp only for keeping Retics? I’m hearing this more and more these days, and I’ve had some really bad luck lately with thermostat failure and radiant heat panels overheating…
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Hello and welcome to the forum! That’s an interesting question and I would love to hear what other retic keepers have to say!
A retic is a dream snake of mine that I will never own but I am still interested in learning about them…… @banereptiles or @tommccarthy?
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I have two separate rooms That run different temperatures, but both are ambient. I keep 23 species total, including Reticulated Pythons with no issues I use radiant heaters on the low setting, which is generally 900 W of output, and they are controlled by herpstats, The python and boa room runs 84 to 85° during the day and drops to 78 to 80 at night.
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Great thank you… I have 32 animals myself… Carpets, Boas, Retics… After the thermostat failure(s) which resulted in tragedy I am questioning what has always been my heating method… I have all Animal Plastics cages, Reptile Basics Thermostats and radiant heat panels… This heating style has its challenges. If animals find a way to move the probe temps can swing wildly.
More and more folks are going to ambient only it seems… Jeff Ronnie of Boaphile has been doing ambient for many years and has been very successful in Boa reproduction. It is hard to find information on this topic.
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. You mentioned Jeff Ronne who became a friend of mine after I purchased 4 Boaphile enclosures from him and he always preached an even 85 degrees tops on the warm side. Which is of course correct! Nice and dreamy inside those things for sure!
But I had a problem with one of the enclosures. I housed a male and female CAB together because I had bought them as babies and they pretty much stayed together.
The problem with the enclosure they were in was that it was so ambient and humidity temp correct that it produced 11 little boa babies! (I had already removed the male a few months ago because he had missed a few meals. (I thought he was thinking about breeding but since I had not put them in brumation? I didn’t give it a second thought!). 
So after the shock of finding those little babies (momma had just eaten a ft rat the night before btw) (and I am not a breeder!) btw, I called Jeff with a frantic SOS and at first he started laughing at me over the phone and said something like, “ Well didn’t you know that my Boaphiles are conducive to boa breeding?” . And I said, “Now You Tell Me!” And THAT’s the only problem I ever had with those “dreamy” conducive to mating Boaphiles! BTW Those things should come with a warning label! WARNING: DO NOT INSERT MALE AND FEMALE TOGETHER!, for idiots like me! 
But he made good on it because he helped me out with all the advice I needed. He always called me the crazy boa lady from Indiana so after that I became even crazier!
I gotta tell ya, in my book Jeff Ronne is one nice human being! 
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Ive ordered HerpStat - 4’s… i tried the ambient thing a few days and its not for me… but I’m not relying on Reptile Basics any longer… This is an interesting topic there seems to be very little good info on…
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