heating question

i need a way to heat a vaejovis confusus and i cant use a heat lamp because it will be to hot, i have 2 heat mats att 7 watts each, could i get away with putting one on the bottom of the tank as long as it doesnt get to hot as i find heatmats on the side of the tank ineffective. i cant get away with no heating for them because my room is to cold.

Why is the heat lamp too hot? Just move it a little further away from the tank.

How about cranking up the heat in the room? I find that with room temperature (21 degrees celcius) and a heat-mat, my enclosures land at 27 degrees celcius, which is fine for (almost) any scorpion! I don't understand how you can't make it hot enough with two mats?

the lamp will be to close to them and if i raise it, i will melt the tank like my last tank and as my rooms cold and heat rises the mats are inexpensive, i cant raise the tempreature in my room because of my illness

mezzle992 wrote:

i cant raise the tempreature in my room because of my illness

Um, isn't being warm supposed to help you when you're sick?

Also, I don't understand how if the lamp is too close it's too hot for the tank, but being higher up it melts the tank . . .

nope ive got a blood desease call spherocytotis and the lids of the exo terra tanks melt under an infrared lamp

Don't use infrared then! I used to use normal 40W light bolts in my enclosure for snakes and lizards and it worked just fine! And I guarantee you it won't melt anything! Just poke a hole in the net and put the cable thrue it, then attach the light socket inside the enclosure!

BTW sorry about your desease!

i will give that ago because heat mts are usless, thanks

i dont use anything for my scorps cos my room is like a sauna.

mezzle992 wrote:

i will give that ago because heat mts are usless, thanks

You are welcome!

The reason your meant to use infrared for scorpions is because they don't give off too much uv but suppose if you turn normal bulb off for night time that would be fine a they are normally hiddenin burrow anyway

231bex wrote:

The reason your meant to use infrared for scorpions is because they don't give off too much uv but suppose if you turn normal bulb off for night time that would be fine a they are normally hiddenin burrow anyway

Yea, you should turn any light off (infrared or not) during night time to give the scorpion a sence of day/night rythm..

Well the bulbs I use say this....

The spot lamp has a special build-in reflector to direct the heat in any direction required. The red glass transmits Infrared waves produced by the special filament of the bulb. The reddish light will not disrupt normal activity during night or day, which makes it an excellent 24 hours heat source.

Recomend for nocturnal creatures, ours does get turned of due to it not needing to be on constantly but I thought it was ok to leave them on 24 hrs as long as they are infrared, is that wrong then?

I would say... It's not a question weather the light will hurt them or not, but it's about getting the scorpions a sense of night and day routine as they would have in the nature! I turn on my lights every morning and turns them off at night every day

Yeah good point, just I was told scorpions don't see infrared as light so it wouldn't disturb there day/ night routine hmmmm will have to do some research our goesboff at night anyway but I'm now curious scourging whole infrared thing lol

Also there is the day/night temperature to consider... That they will notice for certain

I don't know weather or not they notice the light or not, but I like to recreate the habitat as close as possible

Yeah sure but I figure the temp would generally drop overnight anyway I've noticed the thermometer in our Emp tank drop a few degrees from around 7- midnight before we turn it off but my house is bloody freezing lol

Depending on the scorpion, a lot of them spend most of their time in a burrow, so a circadian rhythm isn't terribly relevant. And has been stated, scorps don't pick up on the IR spectrum.

if you want to recreate day and night routine wouldent you have to turn the light on at night and off in the day because of them being nocturnal?

mezzle992 wrote:

if you want to recreate day and night routine wouldent you have to turn the light on at night and off in the day because of them being nocturnal?

What! Why? Only if you wanna turn up and down on the night/day?

I do the light switching with auto timers...I have them on ever viv in my collection...I normally get them at wal-mart

so you have more chance of seeing them in the day?

Yea, I don't really like that... As i said before, part of the whole experince for me is to keep the scorpions under the right conditions! You could say, having a 30x30 centimeter of nature in your living room, and that to me is not manipulating the conditions in anyway... If it was just for the sake of having visuable scorpions all the time, you might aswell just have them in a plastic box without hides and the lights on for 24/7 if you ask me!

Remember this is my opinion on scorpion keeping, so please don't be offended if you do not agree!

No offence was intended

i agree and plus its too hard to have it dark during the day anyway lol...we have web cams set up on ours so we can sit in bed and watch them on laptop, although its not set up atm....hmmm may have to do this later though

Thats a pretty good idea bex! Mine are all "freezing" everytime i enter the room... "If we don't move he can't see us" lol