Heat/Lighting for a New Tortoise Table - Cherryheads

DanaMM

New Member
5 Year Member
Joined
Aug 29, 2014
Messages
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Hi there. It's been a while since I posted here (I'm a lurker), but I was hoping for some help. My three year old cherryheads are ready to upgrade to a new tortoise table. Our new design calls for a 10' x 4' table, but we have some new challenges in regard to heating and lighting. Currently they are in a closed chamber, but the basking and heat lighting sits on top of a partially covered screen, not down inside like we see in a lot of the plans (We use a tube light inside for UVB). We would like to hang all the lights inside this time as we see many people are successful with this design, but we aren't sure of the following:
1: How high the table should sit if we are hanging the lights inside... Our currently table is 2' high, but we have been able to maintain heat in the low-mid 80s with a strong basking light (I think it's a 150) during the day and a red night light at bed time. It's also a smaller table. Those of you who hang the lights inside, what height is your table? And are you using regular clamp lamps or deep dome?
2. How many "light spots" we will need. We were hoping we might get away with three lights or two lights and a ceramic heater. At night, the lamps would switch out to a combo of red and ceramic lights.
3. Suggestions for bulbs used inside. Currently our lamps sit on top of the 2' table and the stronger bulbs work well, but inside I thought we might want to scale down to 100s. Any suggestions?
Thanks so much for your time and input. My babies are very happy and healthy due to the experts on this forum.
 

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