Hello!
First time reptile owner as of November, trying to make sure I do right by my child (her name is V).
At the moment she’s in a glass vivarium, doing very well good solid husbandry and temps, regular eating and bowel movements, etc, but I want to make sure i get her into an ideal enclosure sooner rather than later.
I purchased a solid-topped pvc 4x2x2 and am setting everything up while I wait for my thermostats to come in.
My goal is to run a combination 50w halogen and 60w dhp during the day, then let the dhp take over during the night to provide overnight heating. Struggling to find consistent wattage recommendations, so I ended up going with the recommendation from the folks at a local exotics store. Please let me know if I should expect to bump one (or both) of these bulbs up to a higher wattage.
Above is a picture of the bulbs I have at the moment in the cages. Are these cages too small for the bulbs? They do fit snug but no scraping or anything, but I’d like to know if I should switch them out for bigger cages at this point. Especially because this girl is a climber, so while I have hanging rings and some wood against the bag of the enclosure, I just want to make sure I’m careful with everything that’s in there.
I cannot answer all if your questions expertly, as I am just dipping toes into bulb heating myself (I typically rely on RHP mainly)
That said, novice as I am, I will share what I’ve heard and where to find better information.
First, I am unsure whether the cages are too small, but i have struggled to find larger cages, so if you find some, lmk. I can imagine the way you will be able to figure that out is to run the lights for a time and then tentatively try to touch the sides of the light cage and see if it is too hot. Not a whole lot of safer ways to do that, unfortunately. A heat gun will most likely temp the bulb and not the cage, though you could still try it first to be safe.
For wattage, I would recommend Snake Therapy’s lighting playlist on YT. It gets pretty nerdy on there, so be prepared, but they recommend going for the smallest size halogen that is appropriate for your setup and species, (whatever that may be) because for whatever reason I forgot the halogen lamps perform the best at full blast. DHP’s aren’t recommended anymore, because they may not be non-light emitting to their eyes, which have 4 light absorbing cones to our 3. But I would take that with a grain of salt, and not throw out what you got because the videos say something different to what you have.
Because for as much as I love the depth of these videos, they advocate for only the highest level of keeping, whatever that may be defined as at any given time, and if you take it too seriously she’ll have you throwing out 100’s of $ in good equiptment because today BR bulbs or whatever they are, are all the rage instead. Or a study paper came out, and now all CHE’s are trash.
Necro-ing the thread a bit, but just wanted to give an update!
I ended up spending the premium to get the Arcadia Lamp Cages, and I’m really glad I did. They are NOTICEABLY less hot than the small ones, and also secure much tighter. Very impressed, and absolutely worth the money (even though I had to redrill all the holes…).
I also bumped up to a 100w DHP and 80w halogen, and the temps are MUCH more stable and the thermostat now has to be set to around 105 instead of the 120-something that the lower wattages were (her room doesnt get above 70f, and as low as 65f overnight).
All is well, she’s happy and thermoregulating often, managed to catch her enjoying her climbing rings overnight, she’s doing well.
