A Question on Heat Lamps vs. UTH, correct me if I'm wrong.

[ebuch]

I know you've seen a lot of these from me lately, but I am desperately trying to get my facts straight and every question I have is different from the last. Well this one isn't too different but it's a call for conversation, and will perhaps answer a hypothesis that I've been stewing on.

Here's my hypothesis (All of my geckos are in 20L vivariums with slate tile as a substrate and UTH as the heat source as of now)

If you have a 20L with a light that is directly over the half of the cage that is designated for heat, it'll warm up the slate, which will warm up the geckos belly, and that heat will transfer across the bottom of the cage, losing energy as it passes and creating a gradient. Isn't that almost better than the UTH if you can control the brightness of the light? Especially if it's a red night lamp, it seems like it wouldn't make a difference where the heat originated from. Not only that but in houses with central air you can control the ambient temperature of the cold side of tank considering that there isn't heat being emitted from only one spot of the tank.

In this house my wife keeps the temperature at around 65 degrees F, which means that with my heat pad half of the floor of the tank gets warm and the rest of the tank is cold. Even if the hot spot is hot enough I can't control the temp on the cold side of the tank, and the geckos have no where to cool off. So it seems to me to get a better ambient gradient it's best to use a pair of lights, a night and day, over the hot side of the tank, and no heat pad, and let the conductive properties of the slate take care of warming the under belly of the animals.


This is my theory, I'd like to hear opinions on it. There's probably a thousand reasons why this has already been proven wrong I just wanted to throw it out there.

 

[acpart]

It's not wrong, and some people do it that way. After all, isn't that what sunlight does? Many people prefer using the UTH, mostly because they feel the lights can bother the gecko and they want the geckos to have belly heat 24/7. On the other hand, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I read recently that geckos in the wild are actually active for a relatively small part of the day, from around sunset until whenever the rocks shed their heat. There is definitely more than one way to do things. The difficulty when listening to others' opinions is in sorting out who has tried a variety of things and made an informed decision, who is just repeating what they've been told, and who tried one thing that worked and is now inflexible about there being other alternatives.

Aliza (UTH user)

 

[ebuch]

It's not wrong, and some people do it that way. After all, isn't that what sunlight does? Many people prefer using the UTH, mostly because they feel the lights can bother the gecko and they want the geckos to have belly heat 24/7. On the other hand, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I read recently that geckos in the wild are actually active for a relatively small part of the day, from around sunset until whenever the rocks shed their heat. There is definitely more than one way to do things. The difficulty when listening to others' opinions is in sorting out who has tried a variety of things and made an informed decision, who is just repeating what they've been told, and who tried one thing that worked and is now inflexible about there being other alternatives.

Aliza (UTH user)

So in other words, if you try different methods, and find one that provides the right environment without being harmful to your geckos, then you shouldn't worry about what other people tell you is wrong because they may not necessarily be right. After all, if it aint really broke don't fix it.