Basking spot frustration

[romeo8404]

I have a log like tree looking thing 4 a basking spot that's pretty tall. I had one of those stick on dial thermometers which are horribly inaccurate. I have a 100 watt zoomed basking bulb about 6 inches from the actual basking spot. When I was going by the dial thermometer reading it said I was barely hitting 90 degrees. As a newb I went out and bought a 150 watt bulb. The temps went up on the dial thermometer to about 98. I later started reading about how bad those thermometers are so I went to walmart and purchased the accurite digital thermometer I've been reading about on here. Well needless to say my temp with the 150 bulb was like 129 degrees. I immediately changed it out and put the 100 watt bulb and it says 119 degrees. I tried a nighttime 75 bulb I had just to experiment and it still reads 111 degrees. Should i get a different basking spot a lil bit lower to the bulb? Idk what to do... I tried using the 100 watt bulb with a dimmer but I have to dim it alot to get it to stay around 108 degrees. By the way I have a 40 gallon breeder and a juvenile dragon. Do I have a defective thermometer or is it something else? I'm reading the temp on it that says outside. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mdtalley22]

It could just be a lot of factors, like how close the baskign spot is to the light, how warm your house is generally and all that...you can still get a lower wattage bulb, I used just a 60 during the summer, because we don't have ac! It is just a lot of trial and error.