TriggerFish
Not so new Member
Hi Everyone,
I was hoping to get some astute advice about managing night time temperature in my Bearded Dragon enclosure.
I am just starting out on my Reptile adventure. I have a 4ft x 2ft x 2ft enclosure with 2 x 7-8 week old Bearded Dragons (Pogona barbata) in it. It's a great enclosure, beautifully made and presented when I bought it from someone local to me. It's a wooden base with cupboard and a matching enclosure that sits on top. The enclosure has 3 sides of glass and a wooden back. I'll grab a pick when I get a chance tomorrow.
The enclosure only has 1 light fitting that I have a globe attached to a thermostat for the heat and light during the day. It also has a fluro globe fitting for my UVB light. My problem is that I have no fitting to run the ceramic heat globe that came with the enclosure.
I am thinking I have two options. 1. have another fitting put in. Or, 2. put a heat mat under one end of the enclosure.
I am leaning towards the heat mat option, but concerned at how effective it would be under the wood of the base of the enclosure. I have carpet on the base of the enclosure, but, I doubt it is appropriate to put the heat mat directly underneath that and not the enclosure itself.
So, my thoughts are try a heat mat under the warm end of the enclosure and maybe put some slate directly above it to retain extra heat. Start running it from early afternoon on a timer. Maybe even get a separate thermostat as my micro-climate B1 only has power out feed and would be on a separate timer.
The reason I am so concerned is that I live in Canberra and when I checked this morning the enclosure was down to around 15C overnight already and we are only just in Autumn!
Any advice would be very welcome.
Thanks and regards,
TF.
I was hoping to get some astute advice about managing night time temperature in my Bearded Dragon enclosure.
I am just starting out on my Reptile adventure. I have a 4ft x 2ft x 2ft enclosure with 2 x 7-8 week old Bearded Dragons (Pogona barbata) in it. It's a great enclosure, beautifully made and presented when I bought it from someone local to me. It's a wooden base with cupboard and a matching enclosure that sits on top. The enclosure has 3 sides of glass and a wooden back. I'll grab a pick when I get a chance tomorrow.
The enclosure only has 1 light fitting that I have a globe attached to a thermostat for the heat and light during the day. It also has a fluro globe fitting for my UVB light. My problem is that I have no fitting to run the ceramic heat globe that came with the enclosure.
I am thinking I have two options. 1. have another fitting put in. Or, 2. put a heat mat under one end of the enclosure.
I am leaning towards the heat mat option, but concerned at how effective it would be under the wood of the base of the enclosure. I have carpet on the base of the enclosure, but, I doubt it is appropriate to put the heat mat directly underneath that and not the enclosure itself.
So, my thoughts are try a heat mat under the warm end of the enclosure and maybe put some slate directly above it to retain extra heat. Start running it from early afternoon on a timer. Maybe even get a separate thermostat as my micro-climate B1 only has power out feed and would be on a separate timer.
The reason I am so concerned is that I live in Canberra and when I checked this morning the enclosure was down to around 15C overnight already and we are only just in Autumn!
Any advice would be very welcome.
Thanks and regards,
TF.