Hi thanks for commenting Joey.

The reason why I'm saying 'correcting' is because is angers me the fact people with come out with such a broad statement saying they can burn the animals and 'never use them on the bottom with amphibians' when there's a high probability that they've never even had an animal or seen one burned by one, some people are uninformed in how a heat mat works and how it should be used but assume that it is dangerous. Think of the people that set their frog up after reading a book by a professional comes across this site and see that someone claiming that their heat mat set up on the bottom will harm there animal, when used this is rubbish and an opinion but I feel many hobbyists are forcing their ways of 'this is how it should be done' on people and this is confusing. Every single book I've read on Horned frogs says the heat mat can go on the bottom.

I'm going to have to disagree. A thermostat is a must and most heat mats manufactured in the UK state this! A mat is a general heater that heats up high temperature and needs to be controlled to the right temperature of the animal being kept with a thermostat. If you have a Horned frog why would you want a heat mat running full blast at 100F? This will cause burns. As I've said, with lamps you can chose a wattage that maintains a certain temperature for the animal being kept but you can't use this way in mats as all mats will all get hot near the same temperature, where as with lamps they get hotter by wattage. A thermostat is not an expensive piece of equipment and by not using one you put certain animals at risk from being overheated. Obviously animals will higher temperature tolerances will be less likely to be at danger. Some heat mats such as the Exo Terra ones have rainforest and desert heat mats, these probably do have a cut off and you can select the mat that best suits your animal, however most mats are like heat tape and need dimmed down or thermostatically controlled to suit the needs of the animal.

I have a very open mind and I try everything before making a judgement but I feel a lot of people aren't open minded and think their way is the only way it should be done. If people are saying that you should create the most natural environment that you can then you probably need to get UVB lighting as well as I'd imagine they'd be exposed to it in the wild, even if it were a shorter time frame but then again, they've been kept without for years and do well as long as their diet is supplemented right, so this is the same view as mine with the heat mat on bottom.

Jason