ceramic-heat-emitters

[MM70531]

Hi guys, I'm new to this hobby. I have a ceramic-heat-emitter in my Exo terra 18x18x12 terrarium. During the day the temp is 80-83 and at night it drops to 71.6 in front and 77.2 on the back left side where I have the heat pad stuck to the glass on the side. My question is should I leave the ceramic-heat-emitter on at all times so the temp stays up?

Its for my pacman frog who I have had over a week now still hasn't eaten.

[DigitalPunk]

I use a ZooMed HydroTherm sensor and connect the Ceramic Heat Emitter to it. With the HydroTherm you can set the temp to maintain during the day and a temp you want to maintain at night. The HyDroTherm has a photo eye on it to sense if there is light or not. I have mine set so it is pointed at the light in the terrarium. When the terrarium light goes out the HydroTherm switches to night settings and allows the terrarium to cool down to my might temps and then maintains that temp all night.

The HydroTherm also does Humidity but I have had very bad luck with it controlling my mister so I have that setup on a separate timer, but I do use the Humidity readings from the Hydrotherm to keep an eye on things.


In Short - The Hydrotherm is a thermostat that will turn the CHE on and off to keep it at the desired temps and has a night setting available.

http://www.amazon.com/Zoo-Med-HygroT...rds=Hydrotherm

[MM70531]

Just ordered it from eBay 35.00 new on eBay. How happy are you with it?

[DigitalPunk]

Just ordered it from eBay 35.00 new on eBay. How happy are you with it?

I love it for controlling the heat. Hated it for controlling the Humidity, but for heat I don't know if I could do it without it. It keeps things perfect in my terrarium and the drop in temps is consistent every night which is healthy for my frogs.

For humidity control i use a MistKing Timer. It is amazing. I spent about 3 days logging when I misted, what the RH was before I misted, and how long it took me to boost it back up to where I wanted it. I used that log to schedule the misting of the terrarium and now the timer does all the work. I still spot check the Temp and humidity daily, but it is nice knowing the frogs are all happy and comfortable while I am at work.


Edit : wanted to add. I wended up going with a 100w Ceramic Heat emitter because it could get the temps up where I wanted them faster and allow the CHE to be turned off more often. It also helped with recovering from the night temperatures more rapidly. I have a 18x18x24 eco terra.

[MM70531]

awesome, can’t wait to get mine. When you say you hated it for humidity may I ask why? Was it now working correctly or?

[DigitalPunk]

awesome, can’t wait to get mine. When you say you hated it for humidity may I ask why? Was it now working correctly or?

No it worked the way it was designed, but I use a Misting system. If you program it to keep the humidity at 75% than anytime the humidity would drop to say 72% it would turn on the misters. It was turning the misters on every 10 mins and after a few days had created a swamp in my substrate. Which prompted and complete cleaning and rethinking how I was going to haver my mister run automatically.

So what I do now is have a timer setup and it runs the mister (and through trial and error) it stops when the RH is near 75% - 77% then it turns off the mister for 2 hours or so then runs it again for 60 sec which boosts it back up into the 70s again. It does this all day and then right when the lights go off for the night it mists one more time for about 10 sec. That little bit of humidity keeps the tank in the 70% range all night (with the lights off the humidity actually climbs some.


I just wasn't a fan of how it was trying to keep the RH up. It would of been better to set an acceptable range and when it fell outside of that range it would turn on the mister and boost it up to a predefined setting then wait for it to fall out of range again.

[MM70531]

Oh ok. I have a repti fogger. Love it. Keeps my humidity at 80% I have it going 15 min every two hrs and it does a great job. I spray the tank in the am and if I work late then it only gets one spray or if I work day shift then it gets a spray in the am and one at night. Just need to keep the temp up during the day. Have it covered with Tim foil on top and that does the trick. I just bought a bah 1000 and I am not too happy with it because their is too much swing in temp. So I'm going to return it when I get this new one. Now all I need is for the frog to eat. It's been over a week now and nothing. Crickets go right by him and nothing happens. No idea what is up. I know he needs time to check out his new bigger place. I heard that you have to force feed them once in a while and I really don't want to try that again. Too hard and I'm sure he was not happy with me for that.


Thanks for all the help in this