# Is my basking site too hot?



## Leftnut (Jul 4, 2016)

Ill be getting a chacoan giant in a week and im setting up my enclosure. I have a large u shaped piece of wood in the cage and when i just laid it on the floor my basking spot would only get to like 100 so I used a hide and hot glued one side on top of it so now one side is still about 105 but the other side is between 130 and 145 is this too hot? the floor right under the light is still aroung 98 and the cool side is about 73. I'm using a temp gun TG-1 for measuring.


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## Walter1 (Jul 4, 2016)

a large coverage of 115 or a bit more. then grade to cool side with hidebox of mid- 70s. Light off at night.


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## Leftnut (Jul 4, 2016)

I have a lower wattage bulb (100 watt currently its 150 watt) on the way to see if that helps but do you think the hot spot will be detrimental overall if he also has a basking spot of about 100 in the center of the u and everything inbetween? I'm gonna take a picture and see if I can figure out how to post it.


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## Leftnut (Jul 4, 2016)

If your looking at the picture from above the white tiles are about 95-100 the left side fat part is about 105 the part towards the bottom of the pic is about 120 and the part on the right is the part that is too hot. But he has equally large areas of other temps to choose from. Also this housing is temporary until he's large enough to not squeeze under the door for the walk in closet that will be his home.


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## Walter1 (Jul 4, 2016)

Leftnut said:


> If your looking at the picture from above the white tiles are about 95-100 the left side fat part is about 105 the part towards the bottom of the pic is about 120 and the part on the right is the part that is too hot. But he has equally large areas of other temps to choose from. Also this housing is temporary until he's large enough to not squeeze under the door for the walk in closet that will be his home.


Looks workable.


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## Leftnut (Jul 6, 2016)

So I got the 100 watt light and it seems good, it wasnt as drastic of a change as I thought it would be it brought the temp down to about 118 at the hottest. I just had a couple questions now based on the little book you get with the uv tube I never read it before it says that since the bulb is 12 inches away i should use a 5.0 bulb not the 10.0 and change it once a year not every 6 month. My rule in life is that companies want to sell all the product they can so I usually double the time the recommend or half the recommended amount. But with these lights I always did 6 months is this actually needed I'm just curious I'm not too worried about a $20 bulb but I am concerned about using too intense of a uv bulb.


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