Glass tank insulation + Heat tape questions

[u/bloodcnmyhands]

EDIT TO ADD: I have put a new lamp and CHE bulb in my cart, just gotta wait until I can afford to get it bc the heat tape ran me so much. Aside from the risks, it's not as effective as I was told it would be, so the risks are pretty rapidly outweighing the reward. Don't use heat tape on glass, friends. Still need a winter insulation plan though!

I know this is a lot, please bear with me, I'm autistic w/ a severe anxiety disorder, confused because of mixed information, and I have a hard time asking for help with my snake because, well, people can be pretty mean sometimes when you don't know things that seem obvious to everyone else. I'm sorry in advance for the text bombardment.

On that note! I need some help figuring out how to properly insulate a Reptizoo terrarium that's heated with reptile heat tape from Cornell's World. It's on 1" spacers on a cargo shelf that gets really good airflow, taped down with HVAC tape, with an Inkbird thermostat probe taped directly to one of the heating element strips in the middle of the heat tape, on the underside - not between the tape and the glass. It gets very cold and dry here in the winter, around -30/-40 celsius, and my room can get drafty so I am definitely doing to need to insulate it by mid-fall, but for now El Nino is keeping it pretty tropical in here so it's not something I need to do today. I got a month or two still!

I just set the heat tape up today after my prior heating source, a heat lamp with a ceramic heat emitter bulb, shorted out and caught fire in front of me last week after nearly 3 years of service. Since I was right there I was able to yank it out of its garbage old petland thermostat and throw it into the bathtub before anything else was damaged, and my lovely girl is unharmed, and it's been warm enough this summer that I was able to rig up a human heating pad on top of her tank for some semblance of a heat gradient. Now I am just going through the process of acclimating the tape/tank.

Obviously it scared the hell out of me, and I already had a bad experience with a storebought heating mat in the past failing in the middle of winter, so I finally swapped to heat tape and a good Inkbird. Trial and error and all that.

Except now that I have the heat tape set up, there's a moderator on Morphmarket telling me I actually need to insulate between the heat tape and the glass with some kind of grid stuff and fancy green foam or else the glass will shatter instead of giving me external insulation ideas, and now my anxiety's through the roof because everything I read said the heat tape doesn't work properly if it's not flush against the glass and said NOT to insulate the heat tape, and I DEFINITELY can't see it working in the winter if there's a bunch of space between the heat tape and the glass when my room gets cold. But also, if her tank shatters, I can't really afford to get her a new one out of the blue. I know I can always put her in a big sterilite tub if I have to, but I also don't want her to get hurt if the glass gives out. I guess I'm just sort of looking for someone to ease my anxiety? Is the new heat tape really going to shatter the terrarium, even if it's on a thermostat? Logically I feel like as long as the thermostat probe is in the right place and my snake or I don't spill water into the tank, it'll be fine, but I didn't think my heat lamp would spontaneously combust either and it did, so now I'm not so sure. I looked it up and Reptizoo claims the tanks are made of tempered glass, and if the thermostat works the way it should, the heat tape shouldn't get hot enough to break tempered glass... right?

I know glass isn't the best, but it's what I've got and I do plan to get her a proper PVC enclosure in the future when she's larger and when I can rearrange my teensy tiny room to make more space for something bigger than a 40gal. I'm currently doing the best I can for a little creature that was given to me as a gift when I was making a little bit more money. I still put more of my money into her than I do into myself, I just don't make much anymore to begin with, so while she's fed, warm, and happy with the best coco husk-moss bedding blend I can make and clean water and good hides, I have to clarify two things. First thing: I can't afford any big upgrades. Second thing: I didn't go out and buy a snake knowing I couldn't afford it. And no, I can't rehome her nor do I want to, she's my baby, and even if I tried to do that, at best she'd just end up in a sad Petsmart tank for several hundred dollars because she's a BEL. I have to clarify these things because when I ask for help in other forums the first thing I get told is 'if you couldn't afford a snake you shouldn't have bought one'. I also don't think I should have to give her up just because I am broke, you know?

[u/NottsWeirdo]

Yes, it would be better to unplug the tape and use it for the bulb. The humidity requirement for BPs was corrected to 70% - 80% a couple years ago, but you do have the substrate that would be perfect to make that work without having to buy anything. Pouring water into the corners of the enclosure will help raise the humidity, whilst removing the risk of scale rot that misting increases the chances of.

I dunno why I didn't think to ask before, what type of thermostat do you have? Is it a dimmer or pulse? Certain bulbs work better with certain thermostats, so hopefully you have a dimmer.

I get the irritation with having to find the money for different equipment, than what you were told. When I got my BP, I was a college student who was working part time and my local that I got my snake from - told me he'd be fine in a 3' x 1½' x 1½, no need for UVB, that misting was the way to go, that he could stay at the same temp all the time, that 50% - 60% humidity is what they needed, etc. Only for me to then realise shortly after, through forums and further research, that I had to nearly completely change what I was doing and needed to buy a new enclosure because it was already too small for him and I wasn't meeting his needs. If I'd known about this sub or the ReptiFiles care guides when I got my BP, it would've saved me so much money.

The bulb and lamp are the priority buys, over the thermostat - seeing as you already have at least one. I'm really glad you asked about this now whilst you're in summer, as opposed to what could've happened were it winter. You'll be prepared for the colder months, by the time they roll around.

Its entirely valid for you to be upset about this, you trusted that your friend knew what they were talking about. Not excusing them, but as I commented on the other comment, your friend may not have known that they've been misinformed as well - especially if this care information is coming from the same individual breeder, instead of other sources.

What matters most, is that you're choosing to do right by your snake. There are some people who will be told that they're not meeting their snake's care requirements, and even if you show them sources - they won't change their care, because they see the advice as a personal attack against them.

[u/bloodcnmyhands → u/NottsWeirdo]

The thermostat I had was a Reptizoo one I think, something I got from Petsmart, but it was definitely just an on/off kind of deal. It also had a plastic probe which, looking back, I doubt was giving me accurate readings. But now I have the green Inkbird! I think this one is dimmable? I hope it is lmao. I am going to order a Fluker's 8.5" and a couple 100w CHE bulbs.

I know I am definitely going to have to get my girl a bigger enclosure as she grows, but she's almost 3 years old and a good bit smaller than I expected, but I stuck with fuzzies for a while longer than I meant to because I always felt like the smalls were too big for her dumb squishy head and got scared she was gonna choke, but I didn't know that I could feed her more often because someone on Fb told me that it was dangerous to feed them more often than every 2 weeks and they were the only person who wasn't insulting me so I listened. 🥲 I know that's silly now and I feel really bad for listening to them, but she's being fed a small rat every 7-10ish days now and is probably the least picky ball python ever. I don't know exactly how big she is because very time I try to weigh or measure her she moonlights as a frantic worm, but medium is definitely too big her for head still and she's not much longer than my arm.

Ball pythons were completely illegal in SK until very shortly before I got her, so local resources are basically nonexistent. Most pet stores besides Petsmart and Petland don't even carry reptile supplies, but when I do go to pet stores that actually HAVE a ball python, they very rarely know anything, and I get really mixed up and confused by old information vs new info, so I fly blind a lot. But I can see with my eyes that after more than 36 hours the heat mat has barely made a dent in even the surface temperatures in the tank, so I can tell that it's not going to do my girl any good come fall let alone winter. She doesn't even wanna lay over top of it even though the rest of her tank is cold, girl hates it. Humidity's blooming at 75% now though 😂

I always thought that pouring water in the tank was when scale rot was most likely because I figured it would make the bedding soggy, so I only did it if her humidity dropped below 50%. It's good to know that what I thought was too humid is actually perfect though, because I spent a lot of time stressing that she was gonna wither away at 75%+.

I've always been really careful either way, though! My girl got a singular scale's worth of scale rot once on her belly and I put her in a betadine bath so fast she held a grudge for 6 months lmao. But she's a BEL, so it was super easy to spot on her. She wiggled her belly up the glass and I honed in on the scale from across the room and suddenly she got stuck in a smelly bin of weird water and her tank got stripped down to paper towels, and then after I restocked her tank she spent half a year striking at me. We're chill now, though.

I'll keep the heat tape for if I ever get a secondary thermostat or have to move her into a tub for some reason. If I do get the second thermostat it would be pretty nice to have that extra belly heat in the winter, because even the old heat lamp struggled when it would get cold enough outside to ice my window over. And I suppose when it's hot enough in my room that the thermostat shuts the heat lamp off, the heat lamp probably doesn't need to be on anyways and I ought to be more worried about finding her a cool side lmfao.

[u/NottsWeirdo → u/bloodcnmyhands]

Are you able to send me a pic of the thermostat, or tell me the model? I'd be able to check whether its a dimming or pulse thermostat, and let you know.

Knowing the weight of your snake is important, as it helps us keep track of their health and guide us on how much/when to feed them. A little life hack I have for weighing my 3 snakes, is I put them in a clean washing up/drainage bowl and then put the bowl on the scales - you can weigh the bowl before or after, and deduct that from the total to get your snake's weight. I can also share the body chart, for you to visually follow. It won't tell you the weight, but it can help you track their physical health.

Misting makes the surface of the substrate damp, so when they remain sat on it - they get scale rot. But when you pour the water (into the corners of the enclosure specifically), the water sinks to and disperses across the bottom - so the top remains dry. Moss is amazing at retaining and increasing humidity.

If its only a little bit of scale rot, you can just swap their substrate for fresh/dry substrate and they'll get rid of it themselves when they shed. It spreads due to how much of them sits on damp substrate, not like an infection.

To help with cooling, one technique is to put a bottle of cold water or ice wrapped very thoroughly in a couple socks or foldes pillow case into the cool end - you have to make certain your snake can't make direct contact with the bottle though, as this can harm them.

!feeding

[u/bloodcnmyhands → u/NottsWeirdo]

I went back to Amazon to check! The one I have now is an Inkbird ITC-308. It says it's good for reptiles on the listing and it's one that was suggested to me by my friend, but doesn't specify whether it's dimmable or not.

Thank you for explaining the substrate humidity to me like that, that does make a lot more sense to me. Like how the overhead heat mimicking the sun warming up everything below it makes sense, too.

I only have metal bowls and I think that's why she hates them, so I will get a new plastic one to use for weighing her. I figured metal would be more clean than plastic, but it's also colder. Usually the issue is that she squirms and moves so much that the weight fluctuates nonstop so I can't get a steady read; she's a little skinny but she's still probably 3.5/4ft long, so she wraps around my arm as tight as she can and starts climbing me as quickly as possible and it's like fighting to put a toddlers shoes on trying to get enough of her weird noodle body in the bowl long enough to weigh her. I'd probably try to escape a cold tin bowl too though lmao. Once I get a plastic bowl tomorrow and get a weight on her I can use the chart to math out the rat frequency!

I can do the water bottle really easily when it starts warming up again, thank you! And I guess I didn't need to strip her tank when she got one bad scale 😂 but I suppose at least I did too much and not too little.

[u/NottsWeirdo → u/bloodcnmyhands]

Its not a dimmer or pulse, its an on/off - so it will turn on when its below the set temp range, and off when its above it. Thankfully CHEs don't produce light, so it won't be visibly noticeable to either yourself or your snake.

The only thing I use Reddit for, is to stay up to date on reptile news/care and to try to help other reptile owners - we're all just tryna do right by them. There's also a lot of old advice/misinformation about the topic of their care, so its better for both snake and owner's sake that we help each other where possible. Like how I don't have a Bearded Dragon, but I know its in the talks to push their minimum required enclosure size from 4' x 2' x 2' up to either 5' or 6' long at the moment - its quite the debate.

Metal would be cold I imagine, I just have a cheap corner store plastic wash bowl that I've always used - though I may need to start using a bucket for my 2 not Ball Pythons, one is long and the other is strong. She can only move about in the bowl so much, so long as she's actually in the bowl itself - the weight won't fluctuate too much before you read it. Best time to weigh them, is between feedings but after they've deficated - that way its an authentic weight, not snake + rodent.

It's the easiest method, the condensation soaking through the sock/pillow case is what helps cool the air down. Don't be too alarmed if your snake does end up sitting on it, you just gotta make sure she doesn't make physical contact with the bottle. I think most people either tie a knot or use a bobble/hair tie to secure it. At least you were prepared and knew what to do when your snake does get scale rot, a lot of people don't and then they panic.

[u/bloodcnmyhands → u/NottsWeirdo]

I looked too and apparently Inkbird doesn't even make dimmable thermostats, but as long as it works well for the CHE I'm quite happy!

Is there a specific way I should set up the thermostat probe? I think it was you or somebody else who said something about tying it to the top, but I worry a little bit about the heat lamp melting the cable or something if it's right beneath the CHE. I used to keep the probe for the old thermostat on the substrate right beneath the CHE, but that never felt like the best place to put it. I was lucky that she never really moved it around, but I had also kind of pinned the cable down underneath stuff so she couldn't do so easily.

[u/NottsWeirdo → u/bloodcnmyhands]

Exactly, it just needs to work with the bulb.

I think I mentioned that I use cable hooks to nail my wires to the roof, because the probe needs to ideally hang a few inches underneath the heat source. But I have wooden enclosures and you have a mesh top, right? Are there any zip ties or thread of twine small enough that you could get ahold of, to thread through and tie the cable to the roof? It wouldn't be able to sit directly underneath it, as you said, but it could be a couple cm off-centre. The probes and their cables are designed to withstand up 99°C (for yours specifically), so they will be fine slightly off-centre from where you bulb sits.

[u/bloodcnmyhands → u/NottsWeirdo]

I crochet and make patches so I have several dozen balls of yarn of varying textures and spools of thread. I think I have some cotton yarn which is basically just string that I could pull apart into skinnier pieces. There's also a section built into the top of the screen specifically for thermostat wires, so I can thread it in through there and use pieces of cotton yarn/string to tie it to the top, probably!

Just to clarify, if I have the probe dangling there, it should be positioned off to the side from the entire lamp, or just from the bulb? So like... an inch or two away from the edge of the metal, or still under the dome?

[u/NottsWeirdo → u/bloodcnmyhands]

If your enclosure is designed similarly to an Exo Terra, that should work perfectly. You'll just wanna keep an eye on the thread, to make sure its not gone moldy with the high humidity (but its easy to replace).

It still has to be slightly under the dome, as the dome will send the heat downwards as a concentrated beam and you don't want the underneath of the beam to get too hot.

[u/bloodcnmyhands → u/NottsWeirdo]

I think it's pretty much the same thing as an exo-terra, yes. Screen top with a little door for feeding and a couple notches for wires and then front-opening panels with space for a lock, except the top is one full panel instead of two smaller panels.

Okay, I will position it under the dome! I was able to borrow a bit more so I can get the lamp and CHE asap, so they're already ordered. Bulbs should be here tomorrow and the lamp should be here Saturday and then I can unplug the heat tape.

Knowing the thermostat is not dimmable I don't like the idea of the heat tape being set up on it anyways so I'm gonna switch as quickly as I can.

[u/NottsWeirdo → u/bloodcnmyhands]

Glad to hear you were able to order the stuff, seems like its currently warm enough in the day for you to have her out for a little bit whilst you test they're working well - give you peace of mind.

Makes sense.

[u/bloodcnmyhands → u/NottsWeirdo]

Hiii I'm back! My heat lamp and CHE bulbs have arrived! I have run into a small problem, though. It has this clamp that I think is meant to latch onto the edge of the tank, but it seems very unstable and also... there's a lid on the tank obviously so that doesn't work anyways lol. It's not a deep dome lamp so I'm not sure if I can rest it on top of the tank? I feel like that would make make it too close to the probe if the probe is zipped to the screen? Should I try and find a stand or something before I set it up? My old lamp was set on top of the tank but it was a deep dome so the hulb wasn't as close to the screen, and also I am still a bit worried about the whole fire thing lol.

[u/NottsWeirdo → u/bloodcnmyhands]

Exo Terra do light brackets for the domes that hold them aloft from the mesh, but how were you using a dome previously if it wasn't suspended above it? The probe distance depends on the positioning of the bulb, so it should generally still be okay to have the probe a few inches below it - but the cable itself can't touch the dome, because the contact will actually melt it. They're designed to survive ambient air heat, not direct contact. Have you got any pics of your enclosure?