Lighting and heating advice

Cole Angermayer

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Hello I have a 2 month old baby Sulcata and I was wondering if i have the correct lighting and heating for him. I have a Zoo Med nocturnal infrared heat lamp and a 100 watt reptisun 10.0 UVB bulb. I was wondering if I needed a basking light also?
 

mike taylor

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Check out the sulcata section of the forum Tom has all you need to know at the top section .
 

mike taylor

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I would say a che and a thermostat .
 

Tom

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Hello I have a 2 month old baby Sulcata and I was wondering if i have the correct lighting and heating for him. I have a Zoo Med nocturnal infrared heat lamp and a 100 watt reptisun 10.0 UVB bulb. I was wondering if I needed a basking light also?

I knew I had seen this question before. Sorry I failed to answer before. Work has been crazy.

I would not use any colored bulbs day or night. They need it dark at night.

Reptisun 10.0 bulbs are florescent lights. They don't come in 100 watts. What do you have there? Is it a spiral type cfl bulb? Or is it a 100 watt Powersun mercury vapor bulb? Something else maybe?

Here is a heating and lighting response I typed up for another person with a baby sulcata. I think the same info applies to you too:

Let me break down the heating and lighting thing. You need three or four elements:
1. Heat. During the day this is best accomplished with 65 watt flood bulbs from the hardware store set on digital timers. These also give some light. Move them higher or lower to get the basking temp under them correct. I buy them in 6 packs, so if they burn out I always have a spare on hand.
2. Light. Sometimes the basking bulb and ambient room light are enough. If not, use a tube style florescent strip light form the hardware store. Run it on the same timer as the heat lamps. Try to get a bulb in the 5000-6500K color range. The more common 2500K color range bulbs look yellowish.
3. Ambient temp maintenance and night heat. Tortoises need it dark at night, but still warm. This is best accomplished with the use of a CHE in a ceramic based fixture. Get the 11" ceramic based domes from Home Depot for all your heat lamps.
4. UV. Best to sun them for an hour two or more times a week. Its okay to skip a few weeks over winter and this will do no harm. If you live in the frozen North (or Midwest…), you will need to provide some artificial UV. Several options for this:
a. Use a mercury vapor bulb, like the Powersun for your basking bulb. Use this in the Home Depot fixture I mentioned, not in a small pet store dome or deep dome. Replace it every fall. This would be instead of, or in addition to, the regular 65 watt flood bulb mentioned above.
b. Use a long tube type 10.0 florescent bulb. These MUST be mounted no more than 10-12" from the tortoise to be effective.
c. Get an Arcadia 12% HO bulb from lightyourreptiles.com. These are great, but they make a lot of UV. Mount it at least 18" and as much as 26" away from the tortoise and put it on its own timer for only about 4 hours a day.

Hope these explanations and recommendations will help you too.
 

Cole Angermayer

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Yes thank you these tips are very helpful. I was also wondering if you had any tips on how to close off my 40 gallon aquarium because its hard to keep the heat and humidity in?
 

Tom

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Some people use glass, plexi-glass or tinfoil. Just be very careful with how you mount your heat lamps, so you don't start a fire. This happens all too often.

Personally, I'd make a closed chamber.
 
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