Hi,

The temperatures in my terrarium are a bit cool and I can't seem to be able to get them up.

The current temperatures
Cool side: around 20 C (sometimes even 1 or 2 degrees lower)
Warm side air: max around 25-26C, sometimes 27C, min night time : 20C
Warm side surface: 30-32 for the rock and 1-2 degrees less for the soil

Although I wasn't regularly monitoring the temperatures last winter, they seemed to be fine and my snake was behaving normally. This summer I switched the terrarium and the new one is the same size, but 2 inches taller.

I believe the heat bulb I had last year was a 75W bulb, but I replaced it with a 50W bulb at some point and I don't remember when that was...could have been during the winter.

My snake started acting strange during the summer (which I thought must be because of the heat even though it wasn't spending an overly large amount of time in its water bowl). It probably didn't have a cool side back then (the only cool place was probably the water bowl). Now the temperatures went from hot to too cool kind of quickly early in the fall.

I switched the 50W bulb for a 75W bulb, and waited to see if my snake's behavior would improve, but it didn't. Then I started monitoring the temperatures more seriously, with a different thermometer and with a temperature gun, which showed the temperatures were cooler than I thought. I believed that might be because of the new terrarium's extra 2 inches of height so, yesterday, I added more substrate to raise the warm side up by roughly 2 inches. I didn't really notice any change in the temperatures.

Today I bought a 100W bulb but after several a hours... nothing's changed. The air temperature is 25.5C at the moment and the surface temperature of the rock is 32C.

I'm thinking that the substrate (soil) I added is acting as enough of a heat sink to compensate for the increased closeness to the heat source and the increase in Watts, especially since it's still relatively moist so there's more evaporation going on than there was before the change, but still, I'm surprised that I haven't even gained 1 degree.

I'm starting to freak out. Should I wait for the soil to dry up a bit more and see what happens? Should I get the soil back down to the level it was before and see if the 100W will work its magic with less of a heat sink? I'm thinking the best thing to do would be to replace the substrate in the warm side, but with what? I really don't like newspaper and other "sheet" substrates or no substrate. Is there a solution I'm missing. I'd rather not use a rack for two reasons: I can't find a premade one and I'm convinced part of why my terrarium is escape proof is that while my snake can reach the top, it can't use its strength to push through.

I'd also rather find an "in-tank" solution, rather than running both a heat bad and and heat bulb, but if I can find a decent affordable pad that you don't stick to the glass, I might it on the of the terrarium...

I'm pretty sure that I'm seeing visual signs that my snake has started losing weight.

I don't know if this info is useful, but my heat bulbs are the visible light kind, not the infrared kind.