Tank Heating

[Josh Reading]

I have a large 12"x18"x18" glass tank which is currently housing a 4" Rosea.

So i decided to buy a larger spider for that tank and have aquired a 8 inch Female T Blondi.

I find that a heat mat is not sufficent enough at the moment to heat the tank and was thinking about maybe using a red bulb (it already has the hole for this in the tank top)

Whats your experiences in heating T's by bulb?

[Peter Roach]

Something that a lot of peolple forget is that heatmats have two sides and heat radiates from both sides and therefor lose 50% of the radiating heat.
An easy way to raise the heat from a heatmat is to cover one side with polystyrene so as to reflect the heat back towards the tank or as a second best, cover one side with tinfoil (shiney side facing heatmat) to reflect the heat back. I have found that using polystyrene like this can up the temperature by 30-40% within hours.
I have used bulbs with humidity loving geckos and found that the bulb dried the tanks out fairly quickly, which as blondi's need it humidity to survive on the long term wouldnt be ideal.

[scott wilson]

heating your blondi

hi there,i have a goliath which i bought last christmas,my spider is i believe to be a female she has just moulted and is probably 8-9" leg span,she is housed in a 24"x12"x12" tank with a 25watt ultratherm mat celotaped to the rear wall,with 1" polystyrene behind that to radiate the heat into the tank,this is plugged into a timer which turns on at 6am and off at 4pm now,the tank is kept in my bedroom which is quite warm anyway,as i have found with my blondi dont keep them too hot,someone on here advised me that when i said my T was going hyper late at night i mite be keeping her too warm,after putting the mat on a timer so the tank cools off in the evening my spider has been alot happier,fair enough she rarely comes out from under her bark burrow until late at night but shes alot calmer,ive never used lamps as they get far too hot and are very drying,stick with a mat and as long as the temp is around 75/78c with high humidty cooling off at night i think your new spider will be fine.hope this helps goliaths are the mutts nuts lol all the best mate

[Sonny Howdle]

As long as your house is around 70-80 then i wouldent use heating. i have all my spids in there own room and i keep it at 80 all day but on a night the heating is turned down and a thermostat used to stop the temp going under 65. A red bulb will fry your T, it will dry out the tank real quick.