Viv heating in a cool room

[Lankyrob]

Fish are much less hardy in terms of temperature changes imo

[Cam]

Originally Posted by Lankyrob

Fish are much less hardy in terms of temperature changes imo

Well that's true, but I do travel for work, so if a thermostat were to fail it's possible I wouldn't notice or catch it for several days. Just better to design it to be failsafe.

[red ink]

Originally Posted by Cam

Well that's true, but I do travel for work, so if a thermostat were to fail it's possible I wouldn't notice or catch it for several days. Just better to design it to be failsafe.

Working with the appropriate wattages V basking temp will be your best fail safe...

I.e. if say a 75w CHE on for 5hrs straight can only ever get the basking temp up to 45-50C max... then in the event of catasthrophic failure while your away as long as your thermal gradient is good, your animal will simply move to the cool spot.

Now you can also piggy back the thermostat onto a secondary mechanical/analouge thermostat placed at the cool spot if your really worried. These types of thermostat measure air temps so if you set them at say 20C then it will shut off when the air temps are at 20C in the spot where it is placed.

[Cam]

Originally Posted by red ink

Working with the appropriate wattages V basking temp will be your best fail safe...

I.e. if say a 75w CHE on for 5hrs straight can only ever get the basking temp up to 45-50C max... then in the event of catasthrophic failure while your away as long as your thermal gradient is good, your animal will simply move to the cool spot.

Now you can also piggy back the thermostat onto a secondary mechanical/analouge thermostat placed at the cool spot if your really worried. These types of thermostat measure air temps so if you set them at say 20C then it will shut off when the air temps are at 20C in the spot where it is placed.

All good thought process, I like the piggyback idea but I don't know if I'd go that far. With two small independently controlled heat sources if one fails on or off the animal should still be OK as long as they are small enough not to overheat the whole enclosure but large enough that a habitable area would stay warm if one failed.

I could also increase the house thermostat while I'm travelling but that seems a bit wasteful and easy to forget.