Temperature woes in my Crossfire (halp!)

A couple of weeks ago we moved Elliot from a 40gallon screen top to a 4x2x2 crossfire. Everything seemed great the first week but now he's spending a ton of time hanging out halfway in his hide and only basking after meals, and I can't seem to find the temperature issue that's causing this. He's eating and pooping GREAT with no sings of stress and I have to believe it's the setup.

Setup:
24" reptisun T10 directly over the are where he hangs out when he's not hiding
100watt CHE for ambient heat on the hot side, next to a 50w sunglo on a dimmer for basking.

Cool side has a thermostat set for 87 to trigger the CHE to shut off. Cool side is hitting 86-88, hot side is capping out at 93, basking spot is at 110 on the dimmer.

I feel like something here is amiss but I can't seem to find the sweet spot to get the hot side hotter without making the basking spot WAY to hot. Should I be using a higher or lower wattage basking bulb to bring up the ambient temp on the hot side?

Help! I'm starting to worry about him not getting enough UVB... thanks!

Hello, what kind of thermometer are you using to take temps with? You should get the cool end to 75-85.

Seems to warm overall. I'd shoot for cool side at about 77-82 and warm side at about 87-89 with a basking area of 100-105.

Thanks guys. It's honestly a little confusing bc there is so much conflicting info out there on what the cool side/hot side temps should be.

I had actually tried to set the cool side thermostat to 77 during the day a few days ago (which is the night temp setting from 8p-6am) but even with the basking bulb on for the desired basking temp the hot side was only hitting 88, and Elliot seemed extra lethargic. Is this really warm enough???

Is there another basking bulb or wattage folks recommend that might bring the ambient temp on the hot side up just a hair more?

kyleena29":42ah0d0n said:

Hello, what kind of thermometer are you using to take temps with? You should get the cool end to 75-85.

Click to expand...

I have a zoomed stick on thermometer/humidity gauge slapped on each end of the viv, and a digital probe that came with the thermostat in my cool end. Both zoomeds match the probe under testing and I feel good about the temp readings. I'm not worried about the thermometers giving falsies

So it turned out to be thermostat reading issue after all! Like a dummy I used my cheap plastic thermometer to measure the basking temp (BIG MISTAKE). They were superheating under the plastic cover and giving false readings about 30deg too hot. Naturally, I turned down the dimmer.... so my dudes basking temps were actually WAY too low, and this was keeping the ambient temp in the hot side too cool.

Probed it at only 85 deg this morning at full blast, so changed out the 50watt for a 100watt and now everything seems to be spot on! Thanks gang!

That's great you got it figured out. It's always good to have one of those infrared gun thermometers too so you can always double check and not rely on just one source.