New rack for my leo's

[Up_North]

I have just built a rack for my leo's it is 6'hx 3'wx2'd an holds 18 28q sweater boxes it is being heated by two strandes of heat rope. running on all the shelves. I bought a Helix dbs-1000 to control the heat. My question is about the temp probe...do I want it to touch the heat rope to control the floor heat of the contaners or to I want it on the back of the rack to read the air temps? Any one have any experiance with this?
John

[TLH_Wär§cöötmän]

I'm not sure about heat rope, but I am going to guess that you do not want to touch the heat rope itself with the probe. Correct me if I am wrong but the containers have a space under them, so the heat rope should be heating the air around them, not directly, so I would place the probe inside a container in middle or towards the top (seeing as heat rises and top cont may get warmest??) and it should read the air temp.

I don't have a racking system, but that is my best guess at the q hope someone can give you a more definite answer!!

[Slannesh]

Best idea i've heard of thus far is what Tim Cranwill ( I think) Does.

He uses a 'dummy' container set up the same way as all the others with no animal in it and secures the probe in that one. No animal to knock the probe out of place and you'll get good results in all your tubs but can house one less gecko in the rack that way.

At the moment I don't have the space for a dummy tub so i've got the probe sandwiched between the heatpad and bottom of the tub in my rack. I find the temps there are about 10-15 degrees F higher than the actual floor temp in the tubs themselves.

One thing you absolutley do NOT want to have is a setup where the probe can be moved off the heatsource or the place you're measuring the temp from. That's why I like the dummy tub idea so much. I'd hate to think what might happen of an especially industrious gecko managed to unstick the probe and move it to the cool side of the tank.

[DirtyDuck]

Any Pics of your Racks? I want to build one but I don't know where to start. I want a rack that will hold 8-10 FatTails & Leopards. Anyone ever make a Rack out of a shelf they got at Wal-Mart?

[Up_North]

Dirty Duck....I based my rack on what I saw at most other breeders sites (Tarzets, Tremper and Urbin gecko) and just built it much like theirs, quite simple realy only I used heat rope insted of flexwatt! I used a 1/4 inch router bit to run two groves 1 inch apart about 5 inches from the backand laid the heat rope in them then I use an alluminum tape to cover the grooves. Heats up about a 4 inch strip at the back of everyshelf. I controled the heat using a helix dbs-control unit.....and thanx to the help of those who answered and others I spoke to I worked it out and the rack runs great!

[ydnic]

hey Up-North

thats exactly how we are building ours!

How many rubber maids per rack, and whatr size are your rubber maids?

[Up_North]

ydnic...this is the first rack I built I made it large to hold my adult breeders. It will hold 18 28q sterilite contaners (wal-mart had the best price on these) I plan to build some smaller racks in the future for housing juvies and hatchlings!

[ydnic]

yeah we have 23 adult breeders. I was thinking only bulding them big enough to hold 10 per rack because we are using melamene (sp?), and I don`t want them too big so that we can`t carry them if we move - or want to change something around. But we are going with the exact same set up as you anyways, we think it is probably the best set up - I like the idea of heat rope better than heat tape too.

[Up_North]

Originally posted by DirtyDuck

Anyone ever make a Rack out of a shelf they got at Wal-Mart?

Dirty duck.....I have considerd those store bought racks a few times. I think I may use them for my smaller racks. They do seem to be cheaper than building from scratch. But I had to custom build this one because it needed to be 2' deep and most store bought shelf units are 18"-12" just not deep enough for the sweater boxes!