Heating option for large (55 gallon) tank

[meesha26]

Hi. We have our hedgie in a 55gallon fish tank. She seems to love it but I think we need to opt for another heating element. We currently have a heat lamp but it doesn't help her figure out night from day.

The ceramic heating elements worry me...are they very hot to the touch? How would they attach to a fish tank?

We thought about a reptile lamp that changes brightness day and night?

What would be our best option?

Thank you.

[Lilysmommy]

You may want to consider a different cage as well. Tanks aren't generally recommended because they don't have great ventilation. There's a lot of caging ideas in the Cage Examples stickies if you do want to check out other options.

Does the heat lamp you have now give off light as well as heat? It'd definitely be a good idea to change if so. CHEs do get very hot to touch, but if properly set up, they're not going to touch anything directly. The lamp holding them can get pretty hot as well, but is generally fine to be set on metal wires, etc. So if you have a lid on the tank, you could set it directly on that. If you don't, there's stands you can buy for CHE lamps, which would probably be the next best option. Fluker's lamps come with a clamp to clamp to the side of a cage, but those clamps loosen over time, so unless you can reinforce it in some way, that's not a good method for attaching it.

CHEs (or a space heater to heat the whole room) would be the best options. Reptile lights aren't great because many hedgehogs are bothered by any light during the night - even the red & black lights. So CHEs, which give off only heat, are best for heating just the cage. For a day/night light schedule, most people just put a regular lamp on near the hedgehog's cage or in the room. A timer will help for making sure the light gets turned on/off at the same time each day, so hedgie is getting 12-14 hours of light.