help with plastic caging decision!

hello,
i am needing a good practical cage for my ball python. I can't keep the temps up in my room right without blasting the heat. I feel really dumb and don't know what kind of a setup i need, and i could probably afford two hundred fifty dollars total on a new setup. I am looking at the boaphile

http://junglehabitatsplastics.com/os...products_id=28

products, this or the T-2218, and i wanted to see if anyone has any recommendations for UTH s and the like. Also, shiould i get the smaller or the larger? i have some UTH exoterras that i currently use with lamps, but they don't seem to help much since the tank is a screen top. I really want to fix this problem soon, and if anyone has any advice for me, i am not going to have a ton of snakes, so if there is a practical way to keep two or three of these tanks in the ideal ball range, i would love the help making a decision. my room is cold, usually mid seventies in the summer, sixties in the winter, and the temps here get into the fifties outside, and i would like to not have to completely rely on my home heating system.
Are there any plastic caging systems that have a lamp setup? are they any good? what kind of prioducts will require a thermostat, and are there UTH's that will stay at 90-95 degrees even when the roome temps are in the sixty-seventies? I' m sorry if this is too much, but i just wnat to make sure i make the right purchase. i am pretty sure the large bioaphile will be perfect, i would jus feel horrible if it didn't work out. thanks everyone!

waht is a dimmer, and how does it work? thanks!

I have some plastic cages similar to the boaphile, personally, I would never buy another one. Mine came with a light setup, a couple of my boas squeezed the bulbs and ruined that idea. Being that they are plastic, they will not hold heat as well as you will like.

Something much sturdier like animal plastics may be a better way to go.

A dimmer switch can easily be found at WalMart, Home Depot, Ikea, and etc. They are made for a lamp, you plug the UTH into the dimmer, the dimmer into the power outlit, the dimmer is corded with a switch that will allow you to adjust how much power is going to your UTH. I use dimmers on all of my flex watt heat tape, all of them are checked periodically with a heat gun to insure the proper heat that I want.

Most standard UTH like ExoTerra run at 125 degrees max, so using a thermostat or dimmer is strongly recommended.

Using flex watt heat tape is a good way to heat multiple tanks with the same temperatures. You can connect heat tape to run on one line. the bean farm has good online info for heat tape, MGReptiles is a good place to purchase from.

Adult ball pythons can be in a 36 inch long cage and fit fine, that is what I use for my adults. I need to go, I hope this is helpful and others can chime in with more ideasfor you.

I'm not sure which Boaphile cage(s) you are looking at, since the only link you included was for Jungle Habitats. (By the way - I saw a new post on the BOI about Alan, and I am sure there are some for Boaphile...it might be worth reading through them.) As for your question about the availability of a lamp setup - both Boaphile and Jungle Habitats will include this (for an extra charge, of course). I am not sure, off the top of my head, if they include any type of shielding to prevent the snake from coming in contact with the bulb. The larger Vision cages come standard with a spot for a heat lamp/CHE, but I am not sure that the smaller models do. RE: UTHs - you can use heat tape, or both Alan and Jeff offer other options. Personally, I use heat tape taped under most of my 3 & 4 ft cages, and ProProducts RHP (radiant heat panels) in my taller cages and some of my 4 footers. I am happy with both.
A dimmer, otherwise known as a rheostat, is a means of controlling the power to an electrical device. In this case, it would be used to increase or decrease the heat output of your UTH, CHE or whatever. I have several in use; and the only real drawback is that as room temperature fluctuates, so will your cage temps. This is because the power to the heating device is constant at the set level - so as the room gets warmer, so does the cage. Most of the time, I just adjust them as needed...but I do have a couple hooked up to a thermostat, so they turn off if the temps get too high (I prefer this to having the on/off cycling of most thermostats)
Hope this was of help

woops, forgot the boaphiles, looking at a 122D or 123D

grr, need edit function, thanks both for the advice, i will think over my options

www.animalplastics.com try this one

the people I know that have AP cages like them, for the most part. They are about 2X as heavy as the other brands (thicker material), and they require assembly & sealing...the stuff to seal the seams is provided. Shipping unassembled allows for lower shipping costs (given the weight, this is a good thing). The fact that you assemble them means that you can disassemble them, which is sometimes a good thing, lol

The fact that you assemble them means that you can disassemble them, which is sometimes a good thing, lol

That is, unless you are as, uh...."construction challenged" as I am, lol. Destruction, I can do.....it's the putting stuff together and not having spare parts left over that gets me.

I have a couple different brands of cages. I started out with glass, screen-topped terrariums and had a horrible time with shedding and keeping temps up (my house stays at about 60-64 in the winter) - before changing cages, two of my snakes refused to eat during the winter months and I had to use 2 UTHs and lots of lamps/ceramic emitters on all the cages.

Now I have 4 Vision cages (can't remember the model # but they are 28"wide, 24" deep and 12" tall (221?), which I have 11x17 exoterra UTHs on the underside of each, and rope lights in each on a timer for daylight, all connected to a thermostat. I also have two BARRs (herpcages.com) cages - one 20" cube for our GTP and one 12x12x16 (small display cage that believe it or not, I have in my cube at work).

The Visions keep humidity very well, and the UTHs work well with them. My pet peeve with them is the ridges on the bottom of the cage that run from front to back - if my snakes move their substrate around, these ridges cause their wide water bowls to tilt at an angle. Otherwise, they're great, I like the sliding glass doors. Some people have issues with the "shelf" above and below the sliding doors where snakes can hide, but it's not really a big deal with my boas & python. The cages seem to heat & hold heat well.

The BARRs cages keep humidity VERY well (we got the screen cover they offer to cover up the top). My one issue with those cages is that external heat doesn't penetrate the plastic very well. It's good in a way- it means the plastic insulates very well... but makes an UTH much less usable (an 11x17 UTH adhered to the back of our 20"cube only raised the temps to 76 degrees, even with insulation behind it - adhered to back instead of bottom because it's for an arboreal python) - we wound up buying ZooMed heat cable and ran it inside the cage along the top and it heats up wonderfully. It's ok for the GTP's cage since she doesn't "challenge" her cage like my boas and ball python do, and the cable doesn't get too hot to the touch (I have it thermostat controlled).

So that's something to keep in mind too - UTHs work differently on different types of plastic cages. I think Boaphiles have a slot for you to put UTHs under the floor of the cage, but not sure if they use the same kind of plastic as BARRs (PVCX). If they do, consider using in-cage heating, like a radiant heater.

Since the snakes have been in their new plastic cages, none of them has had a problem shed like they did in terrariums, and the two that stopped feeding the one winter have not stopped feeding. Hope this info helps!

Also - unless you get a cage that is already completely set up with heat & lights (and I would even do this in that case) - be prepared to spend some time temperature testing the new cage in it's new location or at least in the same room as where it will be set up BEFORE you move your snake from the old cage to the new. This is what we did with all of them but especially helped for the GTP cage, because it was a couple day delay when I realized that the UTH wouldn't cut it and had to buy & route the heat cable for it.