I just received the VE I-10 rack, and since there’s not much information on them online, I figured I’d write a short review about them. I bought the rack, along with 45 of the small, I80 tubs, and 20 of the large I160 tubs. Online it says not to use it for high-temp species like sand boas, so, of course I bought it for sand boas. But, in all seriousness, I think it’s because of the temperature gradient, and if I can’t get it to work, then I’ll use it for hognoses (which I’m planning on buying another one of these for anyways).
It took me about 2 hours from getting the boxes to having it completely built. About 30 minutes were just for unboxing everything, wiping them down, and finding tools for it (I only needed a screwdriver, it came with a square head bit for the screws). It took me a super long time to figure out how to attach the bottom shelf and figuring out shelf spacing, so if you know how these work, or if you’ve built one before, it can easily be built in under an hour.
I have 2 very small complaints with the rack. 1 is that everything is covered in styrofoam from the shipping, this really isn’t a big deal, but it still took a while to clean it all off, and even then it’s not completely clean from it. 2 is that the tubs are slightly bowed upwards in the middle, which means that they have some resistance when sliding in and out, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure this out, but it’s a design problem that likely has no easy solution. Once it was built the problem was mostly resolved, but when using the I160 tubs (the I80 tubs didn’t have this problem for some reason) on the sides (they didn’t have a problem in the middle of the rack), there is still some resistance (but not significant). It could have just been a bad batch, so I don’t know if this is a problem with every unit.
I finished setting it up and I’m testing the temperatures now. I’m letting it heat up and I’m going to see if I will be able to use it for sand boas. I set up 2 test tubs, with substrate, and I’m going to measure the temperature gradient with those, I’ll update here when I figure it out.
The pictures aren’t the greatest, I have to use a telephoto lens for this, which creates distortion and a ring around the picture, and the lighting is terrible.
*Banana for scale
I currently have a cheap Inkbird thermostat on it, I figured that if I’m investing in solid equipment, I should get a good thermostat. I’m planning on getting a vivarium electronics one, but I’m not sure which model is best. I’m leaning towards the VE-300x2, but I’m not totally sure how it works.
Can it run 2 different heating elements at 2 different temperatures? Or does it have to keep them at the same temperature? My thought was that I could run this rack for sand boas at 95*, and a different hognose rack at 90*, on the same thermostat (same wattage heat source). Can this do that or do they have to be run at the same temperature? If anyone has any recommendations for thermostats or advice I’d love to hear them.
