CHE & Light Globes

Light Cages

Light cages are a must for all forms of heat provided from a lamp holder. Snakes will coil around the heat source and end up with terrible burns that will never properly heal. You can DIY your light cages or buy them already made from eBay or reptile supply stores.

Get a cage much bigger than the lamp and lamp holder. The cage should not get so hot that you can not touch it with your bare hand. A small cage will heat up and prove pointless in preventing the pythons from burning themselves.

Light Globes

There are a lot of reptile brand globes on the market. However for pythons I steer clear of them and use light globes that cost about $2.50 each and are available at Bunnings.

When keeping pythons the light globes only purpose is heat. So they don’t need to be anything special, nor do they need to be red, blue or a specific reptile brand. It’s a myth that the snakes can not see the colours red or blue and a light on all night no matter what colour should really be avoided. If you want heat 24/7 look at other types of heating such as cords, mats and CHE.

I supply all my pythons over one year of age with 12 hours of heat a day. Just plug the thermostat controlling the heat source into a timer.

The wattage of the globes depends on the size of the enclosure and how far away the basking area is. For carpets a shelf or a branch is suitable as a basking area under the lamp.  It’s important to measure the warmest spot that the python can sit at with either a probe thermometer or a infra red temperature gun. Regardless of what the thermostat is set at, you need to know what the actual temperature is.

Ceramic Heat Emitters (CHE)

Ceramic heat emitters known by their acronym CHE, are a non light emitting heat source that screws in to the lamp holder the same as a globe would.

They can be used during the night to no disturb reptiles and they last a lot longer than globes that tend to blow fairly often. CHE get incredibly hot and touching them will burn the python severely.  A larger light cage is a must when using a CHE.

I have personally found that if the vivarium has too much air flow when using a CHE, the humidity drops so low that the pythons will have problems shedding. If you use a CHE get a digital hygrometer to keep in the enclosure and make sure the humidity stays above 35%.