Heat Tubes?

[M Zurowski]

Hello all. I'm not having much luck heating a small viv (23" x 14.5" x 16) (WxDxH) with my 17" x 6" heat mat that I brought from the show. I was told that this would create ambiant heat - it doesn't. I was thinking of getting a heat tube which is 1ft long and is 60w. Has anyone had experience of these. I would have used a ceramic heater but there isn't enough room in the viv.

currently I have juv red knee, juv brazilian black and a juv giant white knee. one end of their tub is about 26 while the other end of their tub is about 24. They seem to spend all of their time at the hotter end.

Cheers people.

[Stanley A. Schultz]

Hello all. I'm not having much luck heating a small viv (23" x 14.5" x 16) (WxDxH) with my 17" x 6" heat mat that I brought from the show. I was told that this would create ambiant heat - it doesn't. I was thinking of getting a heat tube which is 1ft long and is 60w. Has anyone had experience of these. I would have used a ceramic heater but there isn't enough room in the viv.

currently I have juv red knee, juv brazilian black and a juv giant white knee. one end of their tub is about 26 while the other end of their tub is about 24. They seem to spend all of their time at the hotter end.

Cheers people.

"Juv" doesn't mean much. Diagonal leg span (DLS), though far from perfect, would be a more meaningful description. (DLS= Distance from the tip of one front leg to the tip of the rear leg on the other side when the tarantula is in a normal resting pose.)

I rail on endlessly about people, temperature, and their tarantulas. What makes you think heat is needed? (There are situations where it might be, I'm just checking to make sure it's justified in your case.) In the usual case, a cooler temperature is much preferable than artificial heat because of the drying effects of heat, and the danger of cooking your tarantulas on a warm spring day.

Surely, each of your tarantulas is in its own container? And, those containers are kept in some sort of common "environment case" like a plastic storage bin? (See here and here.) It sounds a little like you're trying to keep them all together in the same cage. Just checking.

[M Zurowski]

Hello. Thanks for the reply.

They are all in seperate tubs inside a viv.

red knee 2"
Brazilian Black 1.5"
White Knee 3"

My room has been hovering around 19C and go a low as 16C in winter. From my experience T's wont eat or do much at all unless heated to about 25C.

I'm also a little worried about a red knee that I brought from the show. She wont move at all, even when encouraged.