rack help

[paintedlizards]

Hi- My geckos were doing really well up till now. Everyone was gaining gaining gaining and now they are not. My BB female with a regrown tail has shrunken tail syndrome and its due to the heat i just know it is. . .

My old roomate got out of her dragon /snake business and gave me her racks. They are standard black shelves with three walls and an open front. I have rubbermaid tubs for them.

the issue is that the rack is only heating to 79-81 degrees consistantly. Which sucks for them ... its only been a week of this tho. Its back heated. I cant afford a rheostat at this time... so my question is this...

can i get away getting just one of those thermostats by exoterra at the local ********? for now? I can turn it on low or high and moniter the temps while i am home for 24 hours. Once consistant i can trust it to stay on the setting i set it at and not roast anyone.

She also sent a rack that is not self heated but has shelves for sweater boxes. It has slits on each row on one side of the box and im assuming you can put heat tape in there... the heat things i have are basically sealed plastic strips with heat inside... similar to these(the only difference is mine does not have plastic clips...its a ghetto soldered job but it doesn't spark and works:

Can i just tape that to the seemingly plastic rack? Can i 'back up' the rack i currently have with that? How do i attach it? Will it melt sweaterboxes?

PLEASE HELP!

 

[rrhill]

Use electrical tape to cover the areas that are soldered and any portion of the wire that is showing, COMPLETLY COVER! Also if there are ends of the heat tape that have the metal (like the flexwatt), cover those with electrical tape as well. That will help prevent any shorts or arc n' spark. You can use one of those rheostats that you mentioned but you will get lots of fluctuation depending on the temps in the room. If you can find a warm area of your home it will help the rheostat work better. But you really need to get the metal parts of your heat tape covered ASAP...it really is a bit of a fire hazard.

Also you can buy aluminum tape at Home Dept to tape the heat tape to the back or bottom.

 

[paintedlizards]

oh ok. I did not use them as of yet because of all my questions... I want to make sure i do this properly if at all... currently they are in self heated ( or barely heated ) racks.