Sand Boa Cage Heating

Video Transcript

"The next thing we're going to discuss is the heating for your sand boa. Sand boas are reptiles. All reptiles do need heat to some degree or another. And how we're going to heat our sand boa is with a heat pad and some heat lamps. Now, there are other ways to do it as well, like radiant heat panels, or heat tape, heat cord, things like that. But they're not as readily available in the pet industry and so maybe harder for you to get your hands on. So, we're going to be talking about heat lamps. Now, in order to do this, what you're going to need is you're going to need one heat lamp. OK? And that's going to be something that has a ceramic top on it. OK? It needs to be ceramic -- not plastic. Plastic will melt and cause a fire hazard. Also, you need to make sure that the lamp is rated for the amount of wattage you're going to use. As you can see, this one is rated for 150 watts, which should probably take care of is in a fifteen gallon tank. We'll get to temperatures in a second and what temperatures we're trying to get to, but 150 watts should take care of you, for the most part. Now, this lamp is going to go on one side of your aquarium, just like you see there. OK? For that lamp to work, you need a heat bulb. Now, I recommend the red heat bulbs, because you're going to leave this on twenty-four seven. You're never going to turn this off. This is also a spot bulb, which means it's going to give you a tight beam of heat going straight down from the bulb, OK? You will get radiant heat out of it, but what it's going to do is create a hot spot for you, OK, in the side of your aquarium. So, this is going to go inside your lamp, right, and it's going to create a hot spot right below it. On the other side of your aquarium, you're going to use a heat pad. Now, a heat pad is going to be an adhesive, it's self-adhesive strip, OK, just like this. You pull off the plastic backing. This goes underneath the aquarium on the outside. It does not go inside the aquarium. It also, if you take a look, comes with these little rubber feet. These feet need to be placed on the aquarium. And we'll get to that in just a second."