Too hot temperature

[おまつ]

Hello. This is my second post on this forum.
The peeled shell is still there, but I don't think it's getting worse.

This time I'm asking for advice about temperature.
My country is Japan. It's not midsummer yet, but the temperature inside the room during the day is 92°F.
The temperature is 85°F on the cool side of the closed enclosure. The fan connected to the inkbird turns on when it gets to 89°F to prevent it from getting too hot, but is this necessary? I use the air conditioner when it's too hot, but I think a lot of moisture will be lost when the fan is turned on.
He sleeps near the basking lamp at 98°F. He sleeps in the same place at night.
He doesn't try to stay on the cool side, is this ok?

I put a film on the glass surface of the enclosure to reduce condensation due to the outside temperature. This film is like the one used on cars, and it blocks the dark side from the light side. Now you can't see outside from inside the enclosure when the lights are on. Although it didn't get rid of the condensation on the enclosure, we discovered that it has reduced his risk of bumping into the glass surfaces.

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

Hello!
How does the fan work? If it's blowing the air from the room into the enclosure or sucking it out of the enclosure in the room then, yes, it will lower humidity but will cool the enclosure more effectively when room temperature is lower. When cooler stops, humidity will rise again. You can open enclosure door in the cold part a little bit to improve air flow.

If the fan just circulates air in the enclosure then humidity will stay high enough. However cooling effect will be neglible.

85F is not dangerously high but it's better to keep them in 82-84F. You can also use lower wattage basking bulb in summer.

You can add more shade (e.g. plants) in the colder part - maybe he will prefer it for sleeping then.

 

[おまつ]

Thanks Alex.
The fan is installed to blow air out of the enclosure.
It's a closed enclosure, so when the fan is turned on, it probably sucks in room air through the gap in the front glass and expels it out through the fan.
I'm using a 60w incandescent bulb for basking, and I could turn it down further, but I need to lower the light position to reach the temperature needed for basking, and I'm worried that a close light will dry out the shells.

I'll try putting more plants and shade on the cooler side.
Thanks for the advice

 

[おまつ]

The basking light is connected to a rheostat

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

Thanks Alex.
The fan is installed to blow air out of the enclosure.
It's a closed enclosure, so when the fan is turned on, it probably sucks in room air through the gap in the front glass and expels it out through the fan.
I'm using a 60w incandescent bulb for basking, and I could turn it down further, but I need to lower the light position to reach the temperature needed for basking, and I'm worried that a close light will dry out the shells.

I'll try putting more plants and shade on the cooler side.
Thanks for the advice

Thank you for the details. Perhaps, the best course of action now is to use AC. I would also try to spray substrate when fan is on: air flow should increase evaporation and top of the substrate will dry out and cool down quickly.

60W is powerful enough to raise temperature in the whole enclosure for a few degrees. However, I would leave it for now. If you have ambient LED lights in the enclosure you can limit time when basking light is on (e.g. to 6-8 hours). Don't overuse the rheostat (it changes light output spectrum to more orange/yellowish and cuts off infrared A, which is needed for effective basking).

Please, keep us updated - what's working and what's not and how your tortoise is doing. Cooling the enclosure is always harder than heating

 

[おまつ]

I found that using the air conditioner would be best, since the cool side could be lowered to 82°F.

However, my wife doesn't want to use the air conditioner in an empty room during the day, so I wanted to know what temperature he would be comfortable at.

Is the rheostat not good? I think the rheostat volume is about 70% at this time of year.

The basking lamp is on from 7am to 9pm. The ambient LED lighting is on from 7:30am to 8:30pm. The specs are 5000Kelvin 1500lumens for a total of 6 lights.

Is there a difference between using a rheostat to reduce the power consumption of a 60-watt incandescent bulb to 50% (30 watts) and using a 30-watt incandescent bulb at 100%? I'm sorry if I don't understand what you're saying, as I'm using Google Translate to help me.

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

I found that using the air conditioner would be best, since the cool side could be lowered to 82°F.

However, my wife doesn't want to use the air conditioner in an empty room during the day, so I wanted to know what temperature he would be comfortable at.

Is the rheostat not good? I think the rheostat volume is about 70% at this time of year.

The basking lamp is on from 7am to 9pm. The ambient LED lighting is on from 7:30am to 8:30pm. The specs are 5000Kelvin 1500lumens for a total of 6 lights.

Is there a difference between using a rheostat to reduce the power consumption of a 60-watt incandescent bulb to 50% (30 watts) and using a 30-watt incandescent bulb at 100%? I'm sorry if I don't understand what you're saying, as I'm using Google Translate to help me.

Hermanns tortoises keep their body temperature between 84-86F. Within this range he will be fine. The most important is to give him ability to cool down (water dish, deep and moist substrate). You can use AC in the mornings and evenings. During the day he will be burrowed and sleeping if temperatures are high.

Rheostat at 70% is fine. When you use a rheostat with a incandescent lamp, you lower the temperature of tungsten spiral in the bulb. This changes color temperature of the light (it becomes more yellow/orange - like the sun at the sunset), also it changes infrared output of the lamp (less infrared in band A, IR-A and more infrared in band B, IR-B). IR-A is more effective for quickly heating tortoise (but too much IR-A is drying the shell). When you use a 30W incandescent lamp - color temperature and percentage of IR-A will be the same as of more powerful lamps, just overall intensity of the light (lumens) and heat will be lower.

I hope this animation will be helpful to understand how dimmer affects light spectrum:

https://tomaskas.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Black-Body-Gif-1.gif

If something is hard to translate - just tell. I will try to rephrase, add examples and so on. Don't worry about that.

 

[おまつ]

He is not a Herman's tortoise, but a Greek tortoise. I don't know what subspecies he is, but I think he is not an Ibera but a common Terrestris greek.

I checked the animation from the URL. This is the first time I've heard of the relationship between color temperature and infrared.
Is it best to use an incandescent light bulb that is 3000 Kelvin and can keep the temperature at 98°F at the tortoise's shell without using a rheostat? Or would something with a Kelvin number closer to sunlight (say 6000 Kelvin) be best?

Also, his enclosure has 0.5 inch of Reptibark on top of 3.5 inches of coconut husk matting.
I buried a thermometer probe in the bottom layer of the coconut husk matting to measure the temperature. It was 80°F when the cooler side was 82°F.
I found that when the cooler side is too hot, he can go deeper to escape the heat a little. Even though this was stated in the forum, I assumed there would be a smaller temperature difference between the surface and the bottom layers. Thanks for making me double check.

Would it be possible to get a cooler temperature if the cool side was deeper? That being said, the height to the glass of the enclosure is 4 inches, so what about putting a shelter on the edge of the cool side for example, and making a mountain to cover the shelter? Wouldn't that make sense since the top of the mountain would just be the hotter part?

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

He is not a Herman's tortoise, but a Greek tortoise. I don't know what subspecies he is, but I think he is not an Ibera but a common Terrestris greek.

I checked the animation from the URL. This is the first time I've heard of the relationship between color temperature and infrared.
Is it best to use an incandescent light bulb that is 3000 Kelvin and can keep the temperature at 98°F at the tortoise's shell without using a rheostat? Or would something with a Kelvin number closer to sunlight (say 6000 Kelvin) be best?

Also, his enclosure has 0.5 inch of Reptibark on top of 3.5 inches of coconut husk matting.
I buried a thermometer probe in the bottom layer of the coconut husk matting to measure the temperature. It was 80°F when the cooler side was 82°F.
I found that when the cooler side is too hot, he can go deeper to escape the heat a little. Even though this was stated in the forum, I assumed there would be a smaller temperature difference between the surface and the bottom layers. Thanks for making me double check.

Would it be possible to get a cooler temperature if the cool side was deeper? That being said, the height to the glass of the enclosure is 4 inches, so what about putting a shelter on the edge of the cool side for example, and making a mountain to cover the shelter? Wouldn't that make sense since the top of the mountain would just be the hotter part?

Oh, sorry. I didn't double-check your tortoise species from your older post. However, preferred temperatures are more or less the same.

It's better to use incandescent lamps without a rheostat and get desired basking area temperature by adjusting height and lamp wattage. However, with a rheostat set to 70-80% spectrum change is not very significant and the lamp will serve you longer. You can't find incandescent lamp with a color temperature higher than 3500K. That's why we have to use a combination of UVB, incandescent and ambient LEDs to get lightning more or less similar to sunlight (and that's why UVB lamp is recommended to be used for 4-6 hours around midday).

Tortoises naturally burrow down to escape heat. Adding 1-2 inches more of substrate can help him to cool down more. Yet, I'm not sure if the "mountain" trick will work: if your room temperature is 90F, then eventually, everything in the room will have temperature closer to 90F. If the enclosure stays on the floor and floor surface temperature is lower (e.g. 80-82F), then yes, thick substrate and the hide covered in substrate will be cooler than room temperatures.

 

[おまつ]

I'll leave the rheostat at its current setting for a while.

I understand that there are no other color temperatures for incandescent light bulbs than warm white. I'm sure I learned about the structure of incandescent light bulbs in elementary school, but LEDs have become so commonplace that I mistakenly thought that lights must have different color temperatures.

So if the board is deep, you can buy some time before it gets too hot.

Thank you. I understand more now.

 

[おまつ]

I just ordered some 36w incandescent bulbs from Amazon for the summer.

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

I hope everything will work out. Please keep us updated!