Heating a RUB

[dannybgoode]

How do people heat their RUB's? Is it strictly a case of uth's and ambient temperature of the room or is some form of radiant heat achievable also.

Thinking of using a RUB for a forthcoming purchase whilst a baby before upgrading to a full viv.

[toddnbecka]

I use ultratherm heat mats, no danger of melting the plastic or cooking the snake with too much heat. You could use ceramic heat bulb placed at a suitable distance to hit the correct temp, but that's basically a waste of electricity. I would NOT recommend using a ceramic on top of the plastic lid, even if you cut out a section and placed wire screen over it to allow the heat transfer. Some folks use incadescent bulbs, but those are the least efficient and don't last as long as the other heat sources mentioned above. IMO heat mats are the best option for plastic tubs all around.

[pet_snake_78]

Most snakes, which are primarily what I keep, will do great with a heat tape/mat under one portion of their enclosure and room temperature (70s). Easiest way to control the heat tape/mat is to use a good, high quality tstat like a herpstat. I've tried cheaper tstats and they are mostly junk. I also use lamp dimers but they require regularly testing the tape temps with a reliable temp gun and I could only recommend doing so if you've got a tightly temperature controlled environment. My entire snake rooms are relatively stable because I have cooling and heating systems for the specific rooms the snakes are in on tstats, too.

[bigsnakegirl785]

I use heat tape in all but one of my tubs, which I've had since 2012. I cut a hole out of the top and screwed screen over the top. It works fine with a 75 watt heat bulb without any further modification and placed directly on the screen, but I didn't want to risk the plastic in my other tubs melting so I chose to use heat tape and heat the snake room instead.

I hope to have everyone in tubs upgraded to enclosures with ambient heat as it's a pain to work with belly heat only.