Night time heating

Hi,

I have a panther chameleon and he's in a screen cage. 3 sides covered to keep humidity up. However now that it's getting colder I'm really worried about the night time temperature drop once the heat lamp goes off. My house does get very very cold at night in the winter so I'm sure I'm going to need some heat to maintain a decent temperature.

I'm just wondering what the best way to do this is?

My initial thoughts are a ceramic on a stat on top of the cage and left on constantly at say 18c? I assume that my little guy will seek out the heat at night if he settles somewhere too cold for him?

Or maybe a heat mat taped to the back of the cage?

Thanks for any advice.
Chris

You will be fine at temperatures as low as 15c. If you do want to have some hating a camera in on a stat is what you want, a heat mat will be useless.

You would hope that they would seek out heat but they don't. Once they are asleep they stay there so really you want to up the whole cages ambient temperature which can be hard in screen without upping the temperature of the whole room.

Personally I don't worry too much as they are pretty tough with night time temps

Thanks for the info, I checked my thermometer and its gone as low as 16.8c already and its not got anywhere near as cold as it will. So I'm thinking I'll definitely need something and need advice on the best way to do it.

I have all my reptiles in one room and use a small space heater during the winter to keep temps up at night.

I was thinking of just getting the lowest watt heat emitter to keep the temp low at night.

Sorry, didn't notice you had a panther. Updated post:

He should be fine down to 50F (10C). This is in the official forum caresheet (https://www.chameleonforums.com/care/caresheets/panther/) and I have seen it mentioned in other threads as well. Panther chameleons are from Madagascar and average low winter temps there are around 10C, which you can find if you look up historic weather data. I would not let the temperature get below 50F/10C though.

If your house gets below 50F/10C at night I don't think a ceramic heat emitter or any other small cage heater is going to cut it in a screen cage at night unless possibly all the sides are covered and just the top is left open. Otherwise the heat will just escape into the room. It may be easiest to just get an energy efficient room heater and set it at 50F/10C in that case.

Thanks for the responses.

I'm going to look into a oil filled electric radiator which shouldn't take too much electricity to keep the temp between 10-15c.