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Summary: Heat bulbs are the best way to heat your gecko's cage. Learn how to care for a leopard gecko from an industry professional in this free pet care video.
Cordell Jacques has worked in the pet industry for more than 10 years. He is also a reptile hobbyist in one form or another. Jacques keeps more than 20 various reptiles, frogs, fish...read more
"The next thing we're going to talk about is heating your leopard gecko. Now, in order to heat your leopard gecko properly, you're probably going to end up using heat bulbs, for the most part. When we're talking about heat bulbs, there's two different kinds we can talk about. There's your day bulbs, and there's your night bulbs. The night bulbs can come in red, blue, black, any color like that, as long as it's dark. It removes the light from the visual spectrum of the reptile. The day bulb, is of course, for daylight use. It's going to illuminate the tank just like you would with a regular light bulb; however it's going to provide a higher heat. Now, when you're heating your reptile you want to make sure you buy a heating fixture with a ceramic top on it, it must be ceramic, not plastic, plastic melts. Also, make sure it's rated for the right wattage that you're going to use. On the packaging you'll see, that they give a rating, this is rated for 75 watts. OK? For a leopard gecko you're probably going to want one rated 75 watts, and one rated for anywhere up to 150 watts, in order to get the proper temperatures. You are going to need two heating fixtures and two light bulbs. A day bulb and a night bulb. The day bulb is going to stay on 24/7. It's going to stay on one side of the aquarium, and you'll leave that on all the time. You're looking at, like a 75 watt infrared heat bulb. On the other side of the aquarium, you're going to have your day bulb, OK? And that's going to be on for the same time as daylight hours, eight to ten hours a day, and turn that off at night. OK? The other thing that we're going to talk about, as far as heating goes, is your heat pad, OK? This is a device, it's got a self-adhesive backing on it. You tear it off and you stick it on the bottom of the aquarium. Make sure you follow the instructions carefully with those, you can crack the bottom of your aquarium, if you don't use them properly, if you don't use the rubber feet with them, or if you don't properly attach it. And make sure that once you put one of these guys on, you don't take it off, because it becomes a fire hazard afterwards, by breaking the heating elements inside. This is going to go on the same side as your night bulb."
eHow Article: Heating a Gecko Cage
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Comments
brad7 said
on 12/1/2008 am
i
right?????????
brad7 said
on 12/1/2008 I have a 3 year old Leopard Gecko.that lives in a 40 gallon tank and bought the exact same things you have on set.The Tank Heater, The 75 watt heat bulb, and the 100watt day bulb. set the bulbs in the exact order that you had them.The Red Heat bulb was directly over top of the heat pad the floresent light was in the middle and Day bulb on the right side(cool side). the tempeture turn out to be...98f on the warm side and 104f on the cool side. That isn't RIGHT! I switched the lights around. I left the flouresent light in the middle and put the Red Heat bulb on the cool side and i put the Day bulb on the warm side.After 10 minutes the tempeture turned out to be 94f on the warm side and 79(80)f ont eh cool side that was the ideal tempeture. in your video you said to put the red heat bulb over top of your heat pad. You seemed to not be the correct tempeture for my leopard gecko.It didn't work out for me to put the red heat bulb over top of the Heat pad.But you said that you are suppose tp have it that way at the end of your video.