Tortoise Cage Thermometer Placement

Video Transcript

"Okay. So we're talking about placement of our thermometers which is important. Generally what you want is you're going to want one thermometer on the higher end of the aquarium underneath the heat lamp, okay. What that's doing is that's telling you the temperature where the heat lamp is, okay. The second thermometer is going to go on the exact opposite side, on the bottom. That's going to tell you the temperature over in this section. What they're going to do is going to tell you the lowest versus the highest temperature in your enclosure, okay. That's going to give you what's called a heat gradient. Heat gradients are extremely important with any reptile, as reptiles are ectotherms and therefore regulate their own temperature by moving about within their environment. So, we don't want one constant temperature at any time. The animal may be too hot or too cold and needs to be able to have the ability to move from various temperatures within his own enclosure. Again, on the low end, we should be looking somewhere around seventy eight to eighty, and the high end, preferably we want somewhere around the ninety five degrees over here. Okay. That's going to allow him to get a nice, hot basking area to digest his food well and when he no longer wants that, he can move over to the colder end and relax."