Lighting question

[Thundersnow]

Thank you for the information. Welcome to the forum.we have amazing tortoise folks here🐢

 

[Tom]

Here is my two cents on this.

I don't agree with a one size fits all approach to lighting. Lighting and heating depend on the enclosure, lamp hardware, species, and diet. A full thorough answers needs details on everything, and on top of that, the conditions can change over the course of year as they do in nature.

All lamps emit waves of energy.
Incandescent lamps emit infrared and visible light.
Florescent lamps in the pet trade are designed to emit visible and UV light.
Ceramic lamps emit infrared light sensed as heat
LEDs can emit anything based on their tuning. Most are tuned for visible light. The pet trade is now seeing LEDs tuned with UV emission.
The better manufacturers pride specifications on the emissions expected from the particular bulb.

Since all the lamp emissions are waves, the energy received drops dramatically with distance. Also, any material, such as screens or glass, between the lamp and the animal can dramatically reduce the energy. Some materials block certain waves of light more than others. For example, glass tends to transmit visible light, but significantly block infrared and UV. The sizer of the enclosure effects this. A large enclosure with larger distances will need a more powerful bulb to accomplish the same results as a small lamp in a smaller enclosure. Thermometers and UV sensing cards can help to adjust and modify the lamp arrangement as needed.

My recommended strategy for an enclosure with artificial lighting is to decide the appropriate background temperature and select ceramic and incandescent lamps as needed to maintain that temperature with a thermostat. If natural room temperature is adequate, that helps to make the setup easier. Ceramic lamps are good a night when no visible light is desired. Incandescent lamps are good for daytime heating use. Many reptiles expect the natural heat to come from above which is a plus for lamps over heat pads. Since incandescent lamps are the quickest to burn out, consider using several redundant incandescent bulbs in your setup to maintain reliable lighting and heating.

UV lighting is important for vitamin D3 and calcium metabolism. Therefore, the needed UV lighting depends on the animal's diet and intake of calcium, vitamin D3, and foods that interfere with those vitamins and minerals as well as the species. In general I think UV lamps, unless they are really intense, should be on for 12 hours per day at a fixed time controlled by a timer. The time is probably better for the animal's mental health over its physical health, because most turtles are active at dawn and dusk hours, not mid-day hours when they tend to hide from light. For basking purposes the UV and incandescent heat lamps should focus on the common basking area to more closely simulate sunlight. I find that live plants need different lighting from reptiles, so sometimes include a low power plant light that activates for 1 hour at midday. This is improves the plant growth, and the animals tend to rest in the shade at this time. However, indoor lighting for reptiles will likely only support plants that grow in shade, such as African violets and prayer plants.

As for cost, whatever you spend on the lamps and bulbs, consider that the electric timers will probably cost about $10 per unit and the reptile thermostats cost about $30 per unit.

Hi Joe. Welcome to the forum.

I agree that there is not a one-size fits all approach. That is why I list a vague general summary of the four necessary elements with recommendations for what works, and then people have to fine tune everything to get the parameters that they need.

A couple of points for you:
1. Those UV cards are not useful for reptile keeping purposes. They are measuring too broad a spectrum and someone relying on those may discover they they do not have adequate UV, after the damage is done. For people in warm climates that occasionally sun their tortoises, this won't matter. For people in colder parts of the world, where the tortoises are indoors for months at a time, a meter that reads the actual wavelength spectrum needed by reptiles to produce D3 is needed.
2. Show me in nature where the UV levels are as high as they are under modern reptile UV tubes for 12 hours a day. That doesn't exist. One day of playing with a Solarmeter 6.5 in the sunshine will demonstrate this clearly. Some wild reptiles hide mid day to avoid these higher mid day levels of UV, while you are now telling people to subject them to these levels for 12 hours a day. This is not good. They only need 15 minutes of direct UVB on warm skin to produce the necessary D3. There is no reason to run a UV tube for 12 hours a day. The recommend ambient lighting of the correct spectrum is there to make the enclosure look bright and "sunny", so a UV tube should not be used for that purpose anyway. I can't even tell if my UV tubes are on unless I lean over and look up at the bulbs to see if they are lit or not.