Originally Posted by
PhunkeyPhish
I'm interested to see what people who keep Eastern American Toads aim to have the temperatures at. I have two that I have had for 6 years, raised from tad poles caught in northern Michigan. I have never really cared too much about their temps. For about half the time I have had them I lived in Florida and room temperature was probably anywhere from 70-78. The other half of the time I have had them I lived up north and during the winter they always had their soil temps around 70-75 with a heat mat. I recently bought a new lighting system (reptisun LED with a reptisun 5.0 T5 bulb) that I am using in addition with their reptisun 10.0 fluorescent. I was a little worried about overheating them, but ambient air temp seems to be as high as 76 with all the bulbs on. I am always surprised to read most recommending 60-70 temps for these guys, as I don't think I have ever kept them this low. Interestingly, first day with the new lights and the toads are being fairly active and alert but not burrowing into the cooler soil. Given their history, I don't plan on turning one of the fluorescents off to cool them down, but am interested to see what other people do.