Night Temps

[Harty]

Just one more question as I am not 100% from other posts. What temps do people let their enclosures go down to at night. I have been having a blue light on during the night which keeps the warmer end at about 20 degrees. The other night it blew and when i had a look in the morning the temp was down to 14 degrees. Is this temp too cold for a diamond at night during winter, as I was planning on turning the night heat off during the winter months as suggested by some peoples from APS.

Everyones opinions welcome...

 

[Magpie]

Harty. I will give you my opinion although you will probably find that most disagree with me.
For a diamond or coastal I would turn the heat off. They are found in a similar climate to where you are, in fact, coastals we get up here where -5C is not uncommon. The argument people use is that in the wild they can go down a burrow or something to escape the cold. My argument is that the inside of a house is almost always even warmer then that. In fact, i have found that I have to leave a window open to get my temps down low enough. With the window shut, it often gets to about 28C in here with the fire going.
I'd say 5C would not be a problem for a diamond, not all the time but as a night time cooling temp. even the occasional 0C (which will never happen in a cage that is heated by day and kept inside) would not hurt her.
My only question is, are you still feeding? If you are, you will need to keep the temps up more than that. Probably 20C would be a minimum night temp for a feeding snake.
Hopefully this makes some sense, I can't be bothered proof reading it.

 

[cyber_crimes]

I have to agree with mags.
For night cooling I'd agree that they can go without heat as room temps inside a house are pretty sufficient (16*-18* during winter and 28*-25* in summer). As for winter cooling when temps are at minimal heat (during the day 18*-20* and night temps may drop to even 1/2 that) I'd recomend stop feeding a fortnight or so beforehand (give the snake a week or so to digest whatever food it has then lower the temps and let your snake go through winter without any feed) This is because during low temps the snake is more or less inactive,Its metabolism is way low and they cant digest anything you feed.Also handling during winter cooling is another debate I myself prefer to leave my snakes alone to more or less hybernate for 2-3 months with no handling or food.Always have fresh water for them though.

 

[Harty]

Thanks for the info fellas. Yeah I am still feeding him. Normally the night temp is set to 20-21 degrees, but because the light blew and went to 14 overnight it got me thinking about the winter cool period coming up. Because he is still little undersize for his age(65 grams at 14 months) I was thinking of giving him a small cooling period(give him one last decent feed start of june then after 2 weeks slowly drop the temp to no heat for about 4 weeks). At least this way it does not stop him from keeping growing for long and will give him the cold winter that he deserves.

Does this sound like a half decent plan. Have only decided on this from all the info I have got from the APS site as this is my first snake winter.

 

[Magpie]

Sounds like a great plan to me harty. As you said, I would keep that night temp up at 20C till you are ready to cool him for winter.

 

[cyber_crimes]

Harty
At that size and weight I'd have to say he's a lil young to be full Winter cooled,so your idea is great.4 weeks should be a slide in the park for him lol :lol: IMO a short cooling period can't do any damage and it has to be beneficial to the snake in the long run getting a small dose of whats to come in the future rather than having no cooling for 2 years or so then a sudden temperature drop in winter for 3 months.

 

[Vat69]

So you guys (CC & Mags) don't provide any heat sources during the cooling period for your diamonds?

 

[cyber_crimes]

During night I dont use any heat source whatsoever.
This is because it is too time consuming switching the thermostat from day temp max to night temp min all the time.Ill set an example of how I substitute this for ALL my snake species...
Summer
I set the thermostat to the day time maximum temp,being 32*. I use this heat setting for 15 hours a day along with 15 hours of artificial lighting.Then 9 hours of no light and no heat.
Autumn & Spring
Again I set the thermostat to the day time maximum temp, being 28*. I use this heat setting for 12 hours a day along with 12 hours of artificial lighting.Then 12 hours of no light and no heat. (I will substitute this temp to 32* if females are gravid).

Now heres my trick...
During Winter I prefer no heat source day or night,BUT as a safety measure I set the thermostat to the lowest minimum temp. I use no heat source during the day and give them 9 hours artificial lighting.Then 15 hours of no light and no heat. Although if temps drop too low the thermostat will hold the minimum setting

Considering the lowest temps here are between 3-6am in the morning, their enclosures slowly cool down before reaching a maximum low temp for only 2-3 hours before raising back up to day time highs.Also the temps inside the house are reasonably warm anyway so they dont actually see many low temps nights.With the Winter lowest settings, majority of the time the temps in my home are higher than the thermostats setting so it hardly ever comes into use unless temps drop too low in which case the heat source will come on. The heat source is there for security reasons only and is hardly ever on during winter cooling.

 

[Vat69]

Oh, ok cool. And are your animals very active during winter? Or do they pretty much just curl up and not move for a couple of months?

 

[cyber_crimes]

They pretty much spend 3 months in their hides lying inactive almost to the point of dormant.Although they still wander outside and go for a drink on occasions.

 

[Fangs]

With the heat goin on in the day and off in the night,wouldnt the risk of respitory infection be a lot higher?Would it not be safer to keep the temp range between day/night a bit closer?

cheers M.....

 

[cyber_crimes]

I too thought about this,but in my house the temps hardly drop below the day time settings anyway.Many nights here in summer are above 32* although they average from 25-30*.On a really cold night (cold for summer anyway) here the temps would drop to 22-25*.IMO thats not a huge decrease in temperature for a night time cooling and that is on the rarer occasions.What you must also remember is that these minimum temps are not reached untill the early hours of the morning,so the temps are actually slowly reducing over a period of so many hours.This is something that works for me and not necessarily what is best for everyone else.

 

[Magpie]

OK, first let me say, I don't have any diamonds, I only have coastals but as their range overlaps considerably, it's my opinion that a similar setup can be used. What I do is:

Spring / Summer / Early autumn: Heat is on 24/7. Thermostat set to 30C. No artificial lighting provided apart from room lighting. Next year, I will be looking at turning all heat sources off at 10pm or so and back on at 6am or so. This will probably only cause cage temps to get down to approx 28C because they will be in a room with no aircon. This year, they had airconditioning so I felt it was best to leave the heat on as it gets down to 15C or so at night.
Winter cooling period: 2 weeks after last feed, start dropping temps so that over 2 or 3 weeks heating is essentially turned off, ie thermostat is set to minimum setting 7C. After a few weeks, I turn the heaters off. I could just leave them on if I was concerned about the temps getting too low. Now, if I leave the windows closed, it never gets below 13C in the herp room and about 15C in the cages. If we go away for a few days and the fire is not lit, it may get colder than that. I personally don't think that that will do any harm to either coastals or diamonds.

The advice I was giving to harty was based on the fact that he lives in melbourne and on the climate down there. If you lived at Glen Innes, I would give diferent advice. Also, if the snakes are kept in a shed, I'd also change the advice.

Of my 3 coastals (well one is an intergrade,) one is far more active with temps down around N15C D18C than she ever was in summer. One is about the same and one is almost never seen. The active one is even seen in her water fairly regularly which she never did in summer.

Also, please note everyone, this is for coastals and diamonds only. If I had them I think I'd use something similar for MD's and Bredli but not for any other python.

 

[cyber_crimes]

Ok,I have been getting several questions related to my posts on this subject.I guess my suggestions/opinions have been unclear in a sense.
I will try to sum it up on a clearer basis now.I also modify my snake room to keep temps higher.This is how I achieve this:
I use a fully underlayed & carpeted room.
I fibro over the top of any airvents.
I run a plastic strip around the rooms door to make it airtight.My artificial lighting actually comes from the rooms light which I run a high wattage globe. (I also ran fluros at my old home,but this is not necessary)
I keep the rooms window closed and sealed from drafts but use a white lace curtain to expose sunlight and heat.
So during the day the thermostat keeps the enclosures temps at 32* while the high wattage room light as well as sunlight heats the reptile room.Over night when there is no heat source the enclosures temps are slowly releasing/reducing heat from the cage walls,substrate,hide etc while the reptile room is also releasing/reducing heat from the walls etc.Because of the temps where I live and the excess heat from room light and sunlight,during over night cooling there is only a 5 degree or so reduction over several hours.This does work for all species of australian pythons IMO,however If I was to live in a colder climate I would supply a small wattage red globe during night hours.

PS The modified room dont really give much heat over a standard room,it does however help to keep the temps in the confinement of where my reptiles are housed.And no the shaded sunlight does not give off UV light due to the window being closed and glass blocking UV spectrum.For this I take my snakes outside for several hours a week.