Keeping it hot enough

[viva4eternity]

As it's becoming winter up here, it's becoming really hard to keep iggy's cage hot enough. (especially at night) any suggestions on different lights? (I have the right lights now of course, but I have no idea what they're called )

[IguanaKing]

Hi Viva,

There's always a way to get that done. ;D What we need to know is how big the habitat is and if it is in a room where the door can be closed for most of the day.

For night-time heating, you'll want to use either a CHE (Ceramic Heat Emitter) or a human heating pad under your ig's sleeping spot. But...if the heat in your house is set to 68 degrees, you won't need to get the cage too much warmer than that at night. Iguanas do just fine with night-time temps in the low to mid 70's. During the day, of course, you'll want a hot spot that is in the low to mid 90's.

Just let us know the habitat dimensions and whether or not its in a seperate room that can be closed off from the rest of the house during the day.

[viva4eternity]

Well his cage right now is still a 50 gall. tank. (new cage is almost done ) And he's in the living room. We don't use our front door, so it's always shut, but the whole house is pretty open, so i don't think keeping the door shut would make that much of a difference. He also has an aquarium heating pad type thing under part of his cage as well.

[d]

We moved our 2 year old, "Bok-Choy", out of a 50g terrerium & into a 4'x5' habitat last week. The change of eating habits and personality is astounding. Hope you find the same with yours!
-d

[prism_wolf]

Many igs over a year old even do well with temps down to about 65 at night. The CHE as IK mentioned are great...and many have used heating pads...me included. Finding them without the safety shut-off features is getting harder to to these days.

There's also the Mega Ray HE (heating element) which is a heat "projector" rather than an emitter. It focusses the heat in a more direct fashion. It takes a bit to get used to, but I prefer them over about anything. The CHEs are dangerously hot to the touch if too close. The MR HE gets hot to the touch, but not so hot that serious damage is done. I have actually placed my hand on it. Not for very long, but a CHE would have left scars.

[MAR]

The CHEs would have melted your skin to the surface of the element. Great care should be taken when using these and don't buy one with a higher wattage than you would use with a light bulb. Just because they can easily be bought up to 250 W does not mean you should buy one 250 W

At this point I personally won't use any lightbulb-screw type element running at over 100 W. If a single element of this power output is not enough get a second one.

I too am a fan of the MegaHeat HeatEmitters. Only 60 W but nice and toasty in the heat beam.