Dubia temperature woes...

[NickZafo]

Hey everyone,

I recently got my heat tape to heat my roach colony that is currently thriving on the extra heat coming from the top of my computer. I cut, stripped, soldered, hot glued and spliced in a dimmer as well. The problem I’m having however is measuring the temperature. I have a temp laser gun but I have a pretty good feeling that that only measures surface temperatures. :roll: I know that the roaches need to be at about 90 to breed. The floor on the tub is reading 100 degrees but I’m not sure what the ambient temp is.

How do you guys measure the ambient temp?
Where should I be getting that 90 degree measurement?
And what does the floor of your tub read? :study:

p.s. The roaches are not in there yet I’m waiting till I get the temps right before I toss them in there. Just incase anyone was worried i was cooking lunch

Thanks!,
Nick

 

[slantedii]

I put a thermostat at the vents where the air escapes...i will post a pic when i get home.

 

[NickZafo]

that would be great thanks!

 

[beardiebandit]

i just run a temp probe to a digital temp guage down the side and rest it on the egg crates. it gives me the temp of the middle of the colony...seems to work well because mine are breeding like crazy!!

 

[NickZafo]

@ beardiebandit

thanks for the advice... I finally bought a digital temperature gauge with a probe and ran it down the center and the middle was only reading 81.2F its not getting hot enough :?

Maybe I wired the heat tape wrong?

 

[augsburg1530]

Your temps should go up after you add the roaches. More roaches in the egg crate towers will create more surface space to hold the heat thus causing the ambient temp to go up. When getting my colony going my egg crates measure heat at about 95 degrees in the lower 1/3, 90 in the middle and 84 in the top 1/3.

Now that my colony is established, I have the heat on low with temps about 80 at the bottom of the egg crates and they still breed like rabbits!

Eric