uvb lighting for snakes??

[snakekid6996]

I was on YouTube yesterday and I saw a guy who said he uses a 5% uvb light for his snakes to enhance their natural skin colors. I looked it up online and a few people said they use low uvb lighting, because they believe it gives a small benefit to the snakes health with their d3 and calcium. Do any of You guys no if this is true or is it just a waste of my time to go buy uvb bulbs for my snake enclosures??

[Lankyrob]

It seems to be a latest idea that UV makes snakes "healthier". Many owners report snakes as being more vibrant with uv.

Personally its something i plan to add to all my vivs when i rebuild my collection.

[StudentoReptile]

UVA is a factor in helping reptiles visually identify food (plants, insects, etc.) as well as offering visual markers for identifying conspecifics. Think of it as enhancing certain inks under a black light.

[smy_749]

Setup an experiment with two siblings of the same clutch and provide one with UVB and let us know what you observe. Ofcourse without a million trials the results are useless, but you can do it anyways and see

[Mikoh4792]

Originally Posted by snakekid6996

I was on YouTube yesterday and I saw a guy who said he uses a 5% uvb light for his snakes to enhance their natural skin colors. I looked it up online and a few people said they use low uvb lighting, because they believe it gives a small benefit to the snakes health with their d3 and calcium. Do any of You guys no if this is true or is it just a waste of my time to go buy uvb bulbs for my snake enclosures??

I'm not sure on any real benefits but I still use uvb lighting on all of my snakes that are not in racks. Just to create a day/night cycle. It's just my opinion that snakes that receive sunlight in the wild should receive "sun light" in captivity.

[snakekid6996]

Originally Posted by smy_749

Setup an experiment with two siblings of the same clutch and provide one with UVB and let us know what you observe. Ofcourse without a million trials the results are useless, but you can do it anyways and see

I wish I could, but I only have two snakes and they are both completely different species and ages (9 year old corn and 2 year old boa)

[Roman]

I use an UVB bulb in my Spilotes enclosure. I can not say if the snakes benefit from it, they are really activ, but if this is because of the UVB I can not say. The plants of my enclosure benefit from it, they grow like crazy under that light.

I read a study some time ago about the body temperature of snakes and heat sources. This study states, that most heating sources would only heat the surface of the snake, the "core-temperature" within the snake would be lower by several degrees. They stated that UV light would also reach the core of the snake body and increase the temperature here as well. I will try to find this study and will post it here.

Roman

[snakekid6996]

that would be awesome