Thermostats

We have three brands of thermostats. We have:

• 2x Lucky Reptile ThermoControl Pro II attached to 60w & 100w Ceramic Bulbs
• 1x Habistat Temperature Thermostat attached to a 150w Ceramic Bulb
• 1x Habistat Matstat attached to a Heatmat for the Snake
• 1x Microclimate B1ME Dimming Thermostat with Night Eye attached to a 60w Spot Lamp
• 2x Microclimate MiniStat 300 attached to a heatmat for the Gecko Egg Incubator & Geckos

I think the build quality of the Habistat thermostats seems the best but I’m told that the Microclimates are better for one simple reason. The Habistat Thermostats apparently fail ON which means you would have a cooked beardie rather than a grumpy cold beardie which is what would happen if you had a Microclimate which fails OFF.

I’m unsure on the lucky reptile kit, it’s LCD display is great and using a Digital Thermometer I’ve confirmed it’s accurate. It’s got a timer built in which I actually use coupled with a 6-way adaptor to switch the UV and spots off during the night. It has day time temps and night time temps. This is all done by time… Feels a bit cheap though, If it lasts over a year then I guess that’s OK.

The Microclimate B1ME has a night drop mode which is initiated when the “Night Eye” no longer detects light, this drops the temp by about 6c for Tilly (the beardie)

The Habistat control’s Mylo’s (the beardie) 150w Ceramic Bulb. I’ve found it’s about 2 degrees C off on the accuracy front. It’s OK if you plan to use this with a Digital Thermometer.

Now we’ve tried a few different ones I think we’ll stick with the Microclimate kit. We buy it from L’N'D Exotics and it’s a bit cheaper than the Habistat kit for an equivilent model. It would be interesting to hear you views on this so please Comment or Email us at info@our-reptiles.co.uk if you have a different product or would like to recommend one.

Sensor Positioning

A thermostat is only useful if setup correctly.

On heatmats we tape the probe to the Mat itself and set the temperature accordingly. Anything which is on the surface will reach the temperature this is set to.

We place the statted mats at one end of the Gecko enclosure so that they can escape the heat to regulate their temperatures as they need.

On our vivariums we place the sensor about 1/3 from the cool end of the vivarium and about 1/3 up. This is to ensure we get an accurate reading of the cool end as this is the end you set your thermostat to monitor.

If your heat source is above the basking area then this will get to a higher temperature than your cool end which is essential for good digestion and mental wellbeing (amongst other things) in reptiles such as Bearded Dragons.

For Bearded Dragons we set the cool end to 85f during the day and the basking spot reaches around 105-110f.  These temperatures drop by about 10f at night to 75c

For Leopard Geckos we set their heatmat to around 85f

For our Snake we have the mat set to around 90F on the hot spot.