Rack Thoughts?

Alright so I think I'm just going to jump off the deep end and invest in a rack. I'm most likely going to pick up a couple more females this season and do not have the tank space and would rather just do it right all at once. Thoughts on LST Exotics? I found this rack there that looks high quality and is a much better price than anywhere else I can find: I have no problem paying more for higher quality though so please voice your concerns if anything looks wrong.

http://www.lstexotics.com/sweaterbox-rack-p-101.html

Questions and Thoughts

1) Back or Belly Heat for BPs?

2) Air Holes?

3) Any other comments or advice on choosing a good rack?

Thanks!

1) Belly heat. Just my preference but the heat seems to stay more consistent and it runs on less power IMO. The only downfall would be burning your ball if you have a thermostat failure.

2) No air holes until you gauge your humidity levels. You can always add holes, but can't take them away.

Okay, thanks. It comes with a Ranco thermostat which I believe is a pretty trustworthy brand.

Have you heard of this company? A BOI search didn't turn up much.

Never heard of them but I built the racks I have and never looked into any companies. Reptile Basics has some neat racks and I've heard they were good. Not sure on the pricing but he's in NC so shipping might not be bad. Dunno though.

My Ranco has been good to me. No real complaints but if clicking drives you nuts it might not be the best. It makes a fairly annoying click when it cycles and it can drive me nuts sometimes. I use it on my incubator now so it doesn't cycle as much.

Right, I actually read through your DIY thread but I don't fully trust myself when it comes to wiring quite yet. I checked out the Reptile Basics site and the racks look nice and a good price. Time do some more investigating.

It probably will if the clicking is loud. I keep the reptile room door shut to conserve heat but if it goes through the door then I know it's going to bother me. Thanks for the heads up.

I don't think it would be loud enough to go through the door.

Brian we get our racks from Rich Baker of Chesapeake Bay Ball Pythons... he is about 3.5-4 hrs up in Maryland via Eastern Shore. Check out his page, it is in the process of being updated but he has his racks on there. Let him know Steph & Miles referred you to him. He can have it put together and you just run the heat tape through. He can sell you the TStat to go with it. I believe he uses Spyder robotics?? www.cbballpythons.com or call him at 443-473-5251 (I believe that is his number) He also makes dividers for the 32qt tubs so that you can divide the tub into 2 sections and house 2 snakes in one tub with their own space. We have alot of his dividers that we use for some of our BPs until they get to larger sizes and require their own.


We have also purchased heat tape and a thermostat from Reptile Basics... and the price & shipping was awesome.. it shipped/arrived faster than his website estimated. I think we had it within a day or two???

Great, thank you for the tip. I think I've narrowed it down to Reptile Basics and Chesapeake Bay Ball Pythons. It turns out that LST Exotics do not guarantee undamaged delivery, they have to apply to Fed Ex, claim insurance, and have a Fed Ex rep come into your home to inspect the damage, all 3 of which are automatic deal killers for me.

I am really impressed though with both RB and Chespeake Bay. Thank you both for the recommendations. It's exciting starting a new hobby from scratch.

I bought several things from Reptile Basics, including my baby racks. Rich is a great guy and ships quick. If anything was to go wrong, I'm sure Rich would make it right. He also has his own line of thermostats, which are pretty nice. I've got two of them - Vivarium Electronics.

Thanks Don. I was looking at those and think I'll get one of their proportional ones when I build a full size incubator.

we have vivarium electronics too from Rich. It is really nice.

Do you use the proportional one? I'm torn between the two but have read that you only really need a proportional for your incubator and the Ranco should be fine for a Rack. I really do try to read as much as possible before blowing this board up with questions!

VE-200 ???

Jabberwocky Dragons wrote:

Do you use the proportional one? I'm torn between the two but have read that you only really need a proportional for your incubator and the Ranco should be fine for a Rack. I really do try to read as much as possible before blowing this board up with questions!

I do it the other way around and it's a little bit out of the norm from what I have read. I use the ranco on the incubator and proportional on the rack. My herpstat just has way to many functions to waste on an incubator.

Okay, the VE-200 and 300 are proportional.

Quote :

I do it the other way around and it's a little bit out of the norm from what I have read.

So you also use a proportional thermostat for your rack. I think the idea with a proportional for the incubator is that the eggs have a much more limited temperature tolerance than the animals. But I can see using a proportional for the racks, especially if your programming a night drop for breeding. I imagine it would make it much easier.

Yep I went on/off and didn't have a problem. I think temps went as low as 87.3 and as high as 90.5 and all was well. Hatch dates on point. No kinks or mishaps. I think ball pythons have a harder time regulating their temps in the wild than a lot of snakes. Some snakes, I think Burmese is one (not sure, no one kill me! LOL) can contract and spasm their muscles to generate heat. Ball pythons cannot. They rely on leaving the nest to sun bathe and return which leads me to believe fluctuation, in moderation, is fine, or so I have read. They also have another technique but I can't remember for the life of me.

There are also a lot of other techniques that slows the time between temp changes. I was using my thermostat probe in the egg container which dawned on me one day that I was increasing fluctuations. With the probe on the outside (after the eggs hatched I experimented) the egg box fluctuated a whole lot less. Water bottles and the substrate-less method most likely helped too.

I have to put my disclaimer though this is just what worked for me and I'm still learning and changing techniques all the time

That's really interesting. I had planned on using a proportional with an on/off as a backup when I get to that point. I wonder why it made a difference with the probe.