Damn you monday morning! I accidentally nuked this post while replying to it and debating moving it. Yes, I'm that slow on mondays. So here is the original post from Mankefam, and my reply. First, don't even bother with the heat cave. The real fear with those is the development of hot spots. It's not the ambient temps they produce, but the extremely high hot spots that do the damage. If you have a properly sized UTH, there is no need for a heat cave. It's just another spin-off of the heat rocks so companies can make more money with a potenetially dangerous product. For leos, the only light you need is just enough to let them know when day and night are. So if you have enough ambient light in the room they are in for them to know when daytime is, you don't need anything else. If you like, you can set up a low-wattage household bulb on a timer to act as an artificial sun. In addition, they can see blue light. You should definately not have that on all night long, as that will potentially mess up their day:night cycle. If you want something at night to help you view them, use pure red lights. Otherwise they can see perfectly fine at night, unless you have them in a room completely without any light at all at night. If you can see anything in the room at night, they can see fine. You can do a night drop of ~10F if you want to. But it's not a requirement if you have a sufficiently large viv. My girls come out and wander around all night long, so I don't bother with a night drop. They don't stay on the hot side at night so they wouldn't even notice it. Keeping the temps at 90F 24/7 won't harm them at all.
Ok, so I will unplug the heat cave. Will the UTH be enough to heat the area? I do have a light but from what I have read on here I don't need it. So, if my UTH heats the area enough then I will take back both my lights and I should be fine. They are in the living room so the light during the day should be fine. What if I want them to be awake in the day and asleep in the night? I have read about this happening and it sounds like it would be nice to see them more in the day. How do you do this? It is hard to learn about these when everyone I talk to says something different. You guys on here seem really great, thanks.
