Living in New Hampshire, I have to control the environment for my tortoises; today I nearly learned a lesson the hard way.
{spoiler: all my torts are fine, and the story has a happy ending}
I use thermostat controllers in all of my tortoise enclosures to manage the heat at each tortoise's ideal level. The power supply runs through what is essentially a switch that is flipped by a temperature sensor, shutting off power to the heating element when the temperature exceeds whatever temp you set.
My experience with these has been great, but this morning when grabbing one of my tort's food bowls for washing, I noticed that the air in his enclosure felt warmer than normal. I grabbed the laser-thermometer thingy and shot temps of a bunch of spots all over the enclosure and sure enough, the temps were as much as 15 degrees over what I considered a maximum temperature for that tortoise.
I put him a covered container with warm water for a soak (figuring that he would benefit both from getting out of his house while I fixed things and getting back some moisture that he may have lost) while I looked for the reason for the overheating.
The Thermostat's sensor was reading about a degree below where it would ordinarily shut off power to the heater... the problem was the sensor. The tortoise had dug into the substrate and apparently hooked the sensor around a leg (or whatever) and then dragged it around the enclosure until it dislodged... laying against the glass door.
At this time of year, my house is in the mid to upper 60s, and the glass doors on all of my tortoises' enclosures are cool to the touch... my guess is that the sensor was cooled by the glass, which kept it from shutting down the heating element.
I reburied the sensor, hopefully in a spot that will make this kind of thing impossible in the future; then did the same thing in the other three enclosures.
The moral of the story, for me, is that you should trust (technology) but verify (by hand). The tech works so well that I took it for granted... something I will try to avoid in the future.
Sorry for the long and boring story, and this may be something that all of you already knew about and so were able to avoid, but I would have been so sad if I had cooked my tortoise, so I wanted to post about it in the hopes that it might help someone else in the future.
{spoiler: all my torts are fine, and the story has a happy ending}
I use thermostat controllers in all of my tortoise enclosures to manage the heat at each tortoise's ideal level. The power supply runs through what is essentially a switch that is flipped by a temperature sensor, shutting off power to the heating element when the temperature exceeds whatever temp you set.
My experience with these has been great, but this morning when grabbing one of my tort's food bowls for washing, I noticed that the air in his enclosure felt warmer than normal. I grabbed the laser-thermometer thingy and shot temps of a bunch of spots all over the enclosure and sure enough, the temps were as much as 15 degrees over what I considered a maximum temperature for that tortoise.
I put him a covered container with warm water for a soak (figuring that he would benefit both from getting out of his house while I fixed things and getting back some moisture that he may have lost) while I looked for the reason for the overheating.
The Thermostat's sensor was reading about a degree below where it would ordinarily shut off power to the heater... the problem was the sensor. The tortoise had dug into the substrate and apparently hooked the sensor around a leg (or whatever) and then dragged it around the enclosure until it dislodged... laying against the glass door.
At this time of year, my house is in the mid to upper 60s, and the glass doors on all of my tortoises' enclosures are cool to the touch... my guess is that the sensor was cooled by the glass, which kept it from shutting down the heating element.
I reburied the sensor, hopefully in a spot that will make this kind of thing impossible in the future; then did the same thing in the other three enclosures.
The moral of the story, for me, is that you should trust (technology) but verify (by hand). The tech works so well that I took it for granted... something I will try to avoid in the future.
Sorry for the long and boring story, and this may be something that all of you already knew about and so were able to avoid, but I would have been so sad if I had cooked my tortoise, so I wanted to post about it in the hopes that it might help someone else in the future.