Rosy Boa Temps

Hello!

I am receiving my new rosy in about a week and wanted some thoughts on my set up.

The snake is a baby, so I have a 10 gal with a heating pad on one side that reads about 85-86 with a heat gun. The cool side sits at about 73-76. I also have a 25wt halogen heat bulb that creates a basking spot on the warm side (above the hide that reads 86). The basking spot reads up to 94 with the heat gun. Do those temps sounds alright?

The only thing I am worried about is the halogen heat being too much.

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I believe 87 is a correct temperature on the hot side. Rosys tend to burrow. The basking spot should be no higher than 90……

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I agree with this. Knock the basking spot temps back a few degrees and OP is good. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the quick response! The halogen bulb is already the lowest wattage I can find… would you recommend just not using it since the heating pad is okay? Or should I look into a CHE on a thermostat?

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I would ditch the over head heat as long as the surface temperature on the hot side stays at 87. I am talking about the top of the substrate…. Remember rosys burrow as well

Also only supply a water bowl a couple times a week….

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I’ve only ever used mat/belly heat for rosies. I usually set it near 90F. :slight_smile:

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So measure the substrate with the heat gun? What about the glass? I have heard some say to measure the glass and some say the substrate.

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As for the heat mat, do you keep it on 24/7? The coldest our house gets is about 70f

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Measure where the heat pat touches the glass.

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What about air temp? I am worried the room I have the terrarium in might be too cold. We don’t let it get below 70 degrees. Will the heat mat be enough as long as I get it to around 87?

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The thermostat probe should be on floor of the tank, over the center of the mat, which goes under the glass. IR gun the substrate over it, and the surface should be mid-80s. They can burrow to get closer to the mat. I really never think about air temps for rosies or colubrids.

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Do you leave the heat mat on 24/7?

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Yep! It’s always on except when they’re being brumated.

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So basically as long as it’s dry/low humidity and has a heating pad spot of mid 80s that’s all I need to worry about?

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Pretty much. :slight_smile:

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@rc_3 since you’re getting a baby it will probably be tiny so I would plan on putting in a couple of small hides, hot and cold side, as well as a bunch of clutter like cork bark, fake greenery, maybe some empty toilet paper rolls etc because if it doesn’t burrow like my baby, it will still need to feel secure enough to eat. Even if it does burrow you should probably fill up the tank with “stuff”. My boy is in a tub btw. Remember that your baby is coming from a breeder who more than likely kept it in a cozy 6 quart breeder tub so it is used to eating that way……

I have a baby rosy that has only eaten once for me in the month plus a few days since I got him. I think he’s eating as we speak but I put him in a deli cup and covered him up so my fingers are crossed :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers:

Just thought I’d throw that in……

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What temps and heating elements do you use?

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Rosies are native to where I live, and it can easily drop down into the low 40s at night here, even in the spring when they start coming out of brumation, so I figure they’re pretty tolerant of cold, especially at night. We get some pretty wild temperature swings, so our native reptiles, including rosies, have to be quite hardy. I think as long as your boa has a place to go to warm up when they need to, you probably don’t need to be overly stressed about the ambient temperature.

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Hi rc_3. Hopefully you’re getting your rosy directly from the breeder. They can advise you on exactly how the snake is being kept currently, and you can use that info to help the transition be smooth. If you’re buying from a flipper of some sort, they won’t have as comprehensive advice. I have about 15 breeding rosies, and have produced and sold quite a few neonates, but it is still useful to try to make conditions the same as what your particular snake was used to from birth.

Presumably you’re using a glass fish tank, and while that’s fine some rosies don’t seem to appreciate the ‘open’ feeling. So as caron mentioned, a good selection of hides and such is a good idea.

While rosies (like pretty much all snakes) will dig down into many substrates, they’re not adapted to fossorial behavior and so this is an artifact of captivity. Making the snake dig to the glass to find its preferred temp isn’t ideal (though as mentioned above, the thermostat probe goes between the glass and the heat mat – the probe temp is not necessarily the same as the target temp at the place the snake will be). If you provide a couple hides on the warm end, and see to it that those hides hit 90 or a little more inside the hide, that’s good.

But since the temp at the glass will be higher than that target temp if you use only a heat mat in a glass enclosure, the halogen lamp can be useful in conjuction with the mat (run the halogen only during daylight hours, of course). And depending on how the ambient temp in the enclosure settles out, the halogen lamp can make more of the enclosure be at a decent warm temp instead of having one hide be 90F and the rest of the enclosure 70F. Gentle gradients make for more useful space than hot or cool and nothing in between.

Ideally, a thermostat would run the lamp as well (a thermostat should be considered necessary for the heat mat), but this isn’t always practical. You can adjust the intensity of that lamp with a plug-in dimmer switch.

While cold temps won’t likely kill rosies outright, inadequate temps definitely will cause a failure to feed. Captive care and wild conditions are not the same, and not only because animals have adaptive behaviors to compensate for wild conditions that they cannot necessarily engage in in the confines of a 10 gallon tank.

I’m going to disagree on the advice to only offer water periodically. While very high humidity is of course best avoided, if a water bowl causes that much RH increase then the enclosure is inadequately ventilated. Keeping the bowl small and on the cool side will reduce evaporation, but the idea that rosies need things bone dry is often overstated. Withholding the ability of an animal to drink when it “wants” to should be done only in specific and rare circumstances. Chronic low grade dehydration is a real issue in captive herps.

Keep in mind that there are two species of rosy boa, and a couple distinctions within those species, so what works for someone’s adult coastal rosy is not necessarily going to be great for a neonate “Mexican” locale. In general, L. orcutti – especially “coastal” locales – are going to be much more bulletproof and unconcerned with housing details, and the non-peninsular L. trivirgata are going to be less so (high desert and baja locales tend to be somewhere in between)

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The one I am getting is a Harquahala albino. They are currently keeping the snake on a heat mat and uvb lighting. The warm side is said to be around 88 with the cold side closer to mid 70s. My temps are basically the exact same currently but the hot spot from the halogen reaches a surface temp close to 95. Is that okay as long as it has other ranges? I just really do not want to cook the snake for lack of better words.

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