What thermostat is better?

[skinks101]

Hi, I was wondering if any of these thermostats will work fine for the blue tongue skink. I am going to be building a rack for all of my reptiles ( corn snakes, ball pythons + ball python eggs, and blue tongue skinks.). Here are the two thermostats that I like the most : Vivarium Electronics VE-Hobby stat and the Vivarium Electronics VE-100 Thermostat. I just wanted to know what is better because I want the temperature to spot on for my animals.

[aaronhouts]

Hi, skinks101,

I'm really glad you asked this on the forum. I used a different type for about 10 years, but when I got into BTS I wanted to try something new.

This line is fantastic and I'm sold on it. I've spent the last 6 months using and researching this line. I've purchased 4 now (two VE-200Ds and two VE-300x2s). In addition, I've read about them and have also spoken with the manufacturer about them. I have some information I've been wanting to share (I know Dakota and others are looking too).

I'm busy so for right now, Ill give the short answer:
for heat tape and radiant heat panels, you'll AT LAST want the VE-200 (NOT the VE-200D):
http://www.reptilebasics.com/ve-200

If you can though, go for the VE-300:
http://www.reptilebasics.com/ve-300

When I have more time, I'll come back to explain why, the differences and to post my experiences and tips.

[skinks101]

Thank you aaronhouts,
I will look into getting one of the thermostats that you recommended. Thank you for the reply!

[Susann]

Following with interest...

[Bluish]

Have you had a look at the herpstat thermostats? They have more features than the V.E. for about the same price. The herpstat can also control lights and humidity. The humidity probe is sold separately.
One herpstat safety feature I like is that if they fail they are designed to fail in the off position. V.E. doesn't have this feature and they can fail in the on position which can be dangerous to your animals and possibly be a fire hazard.
They are both quality products though.

[skinks101]

I will look into the herpstat.

[aaronhouts]

That Herpstat does sound really good. Excellent suggestion.

Controlling lights and humidity plus the failing in the off position could be HUGE advantages. Maybe we could all use this thread to chime in about the different thermostats for others to use as a reference?

The Helix DBS-1000s are the ones I used for about 10 years. They're really good, but I like the VEs over them because they're a little cheaper, have replaceable probes and have models with more built in features.

Honestly, I used this brand because the guy that builds our cages is a dealer. I'm sure there are others that are as good or better. Those Herpstats suggested by Bluish sound pretty good. I'll probably make several posts here with whatever I can think of about the brands I know so please don't be annoyed and feel free to ignore.

[Eurastus]

What about the HerpKeeper: http://www.digitalaquatics.com/herpetol ... eeper-pro/

Or even the EcoZone: http://ecozonevivarium.com/detail.aspx?ID=81

The EcoZone, in particular, looks very capable, albeit rather pricy. It even has direct MistKing-specific control to maintain precise humidity.

[aaronhouts]

Okay, here we go on the Vivarium Electronics line.
In order from simplest to most complex, we have:
HobbyStat
VE-100
VE-200 and VE-200D (These are listed on the same line intentionally.)
VE-300 and VE-300x2 (These are also listed on the same line intentionally.)

Our first goal was to find a thermostat that keeps the desired temperature with as little fluctuation as possible.

For example, I don't want to set my temp for 90 and have it be 95 sometimes and 85 at others. If I set it at 90, I want a steady 90.

ON/OFF vs PROPORTIONAL thermostats:

ON/OFF means the thermostats have 2 setting either ALL THE WAY ON or ALL THE WAY OFF. This means you're going to get some fluctuation in temps.

PROPORTIONAL means that the thermostat will adjust the amount of power to the heat source instead of shutting it off completely to adjust the temps. (For a more in depth explanation go to http://www.reptilebasics.com/thermostat_faq)

For this reason we didn't want to use an ON/OFF thermostat. That eliminates the HobbyStat and the VE-100. They're both ON/OFF thermostats. The VE-200, VE-200D, VE-300 and VE-300D are still in the game so far.

PULSE vs DIMMER thermostats:
These are BOTH proportional thermostats but work in different ways. We've owned two VE-200Ds (dimmer style) and two VE-300x2s (pulse style).

DIMMER-With the 200Ds (dimmer style) the thermostat would turn the heat source down (instead of off) when the desired temp was reached. It would tell what percentage of power was being used. For example 95% power, 50% power. This was displayed on the thermostat. These were good thermostats. However, there was still a little fluctuation in temps.

PULSE-The 300x2s (pulse style) would literally start to pulse (as the name implies) the power to the heat source when the desired temp was close and continue to pulse to sustain it.

Having the opportunity to compare them side to side, we found two things:

1. The pulse technology is best (and almost dead on) at obtaining and maintaining the desired temp. The fluctuation is minimal to non-existent.

and another unexpected but hugely advantageous benefit, it had our Radiant Heat Panel running less that the dimmer technology did and therefore
2. removed less humidity from the cage!
Like you, skinks101, we also keep gigas (Indonesian/Halmahera) and have been fighting the good humidity fight. This was a HUGE discovery for us!

Therefore, we decided the pulse technology was the only way for us to go-especially using Radiant Heat Panels. This eliminates the VE-200D.

That means the VE-200, VE-300 and the VE-300x2 are all good because they all use the pulse technology. ANY of these will provide the same excellent service of minimizing fluctuation in temps while keeping the humidity highest. I would use any of them.

I'm going to take a break for now. I'll come back to explain the differences between the three. I'm also planning to post a pic and explain our setups as well as describe our experiences, but I'm trying to give the most "bottom line" information first.

Hope that helps for now.

[Susann]

Aaron, you are amazing! Thank you so much for all that, and in advance for anything more to come!

[skinks101]

Thank you for all the replies.

[aaronhouts]

Ha ha! You'e welcome, Susann and skinks101!
We're glad to help!

First, here's the next step. Okay, so of the Vivarium Electronics line, as we've established, we're left with the VE-200, VE-300 and the VE-300x2 because they're all proportional pulse thermostats and that's what we want. Let's say you were in a pinch and didn't have time to wait for me to make this post. You rushed out and bought ANY one of the aforementioned three. Don't worry. You're still in the game

IMHO (in my humble opinion) all will provide the most stable temps while reducing your humidity the least so let's talk about the differences.

Again, IMHO, you've solved the most important problem: the MOST stable temps while sacrificing the LEAST humidity. So now then, let's talk about the differences.

First, let's start with the LEAST important feature: the alarms. The only one that DOESN'T have this is the VE-200. The other two do. What are the alarms?
They let you know if your heat source has been on for more than 30 minutes.
That's it.
Yes. That's it. I have them on my VE-300x2s. They're annoying. I've turned them off. I don't use them at all. I don't think I'll ever use them and I like to have everything "just in case."
If you don't think you'll ever use them, but need to spend as little as possible to get started, get the VE-200. If you can live without the alarms, but need to minimize startup cash, get the VE200. Everything else you can add later. If you can live without the alarms, you can add everything else later.

Forget the VE-300x2, let's keep it simple and go VE-200 vs VE-300.
We've talked about alarms. You know about that. What's else?
Night drop.
That's it. If I want to drop the temps at night...let's say I decide I want to have a hot spot of 92 during the day but a hot spot of 88 at night.

VE-300-no worries. It's built right in. I can program when I want the night to start (down to the minute) and when I want the day to start (down the the minute) and how many degrees I want the difference to be. It's built in to the thermostat.

VE-200-Here's the good news! "I didn't think I wanted a night drop when I bought it, but I changed my mind!" You'll need to buy a Night Drop Module and a timer, but you can add the feature back in. You can even buy a timer that let's you program down to the minute. You have a few extra pieces, but you have all of the functions and controls that the VE-300 has (minus the alarms, but who cares?). Plus you can spend a little now and a little more later-if need be. We don't use the night drop at all. Honestly, I'll bet the VE-200 will work and you'll never the need the functions of the VE-300.

Now that you understand the differences between the VE-200 and the VE-300, what are the differences between the VE-300 and the VE-300x2?

The VE-300x2 is just two VE-300s in one box.
That's it.
We only use the VE-300x2 because we run one Radiant Heat Panel and one Heat Mat for each cage.
That's it.

We learned the hard way that we can't run them on the same thermostat. Instead of running two thermostats per cage, we use a VE-300x2 for each cage. My next post will detail how and why we do this.

[aaronhouts]

Okay, so bringing it all together, here's the journey.

As you can see, here are our enclosures. Each one is about 4ft long by 2ft wide (a little less on each measurement-technically 46" x 23.5") by 14" high. What we're working against is trying to heat such a tall enclosure in an ambient temp in our house that goes down to about 70 degrees at night. There's one subadult Tiliqua gigas in each enclosure. (On a more personal level: Scout is on top and Zipper is on the bottom.)

When we started, each cage came with a Radiant Heat Panel and we bought a VE-200D and a Night Drop Module to run each one. This was okay, but in order to get high temps (we were shooting for a hot spot of 95-100), the RHP was running quite a bit. Anything that adds heat removes humidity. Anything that adds heat from above REALLY removes humidity. That is, the RHP was really drying out the cage.

We decided to add a Heat Mat to help the RHP so it wouldn't have to run so much and would dehydrate the cage less. I was hoping to place the probe in between the two so that one VE-200D would control the RHP and the HM. The theory was good in that the RHP didn't have to work so much because the HM was helping by providing heat, but controlling them both with one thermostat (VE-200D) wasn't working. I knew this because we noticed that the thermostat was clicking. This was the relay in the thermostat going off. (HINT: If you're using a VE thermostat and it's clicking something is wrong.)

We had tried using only the RHP but, as I mentioned, it was removing too much humidity from the cage. It had to run too much to get the temps we wanted by itself.

Since we couldn't run both heat sources on the same thermostat, we tried using only the HM. In order to get a decent substrate temp, we had to really crank the HM. Since we have to keep the humidity up, we have a thick layer of moist cypress mulch which makes it very hard to heat from below. The floor temp of the cage would get to about 115 or above. The manufacturer recommends not to run the HM at a surface temp of over 105 so we were way over-no good!

I really didn't want to use two separate thermostats to run one cage, but the two heat sources individually weren't doing their jobs. I called Reptile Basics and they recommended the VE-300x2. We reluctantly ordered one because of the price, but I am so glad we did.

So at this point, we have one VE-300x2 and two VE-200Ds. This is where we got the opportunity to compare them head to head.

On the bottom cage, we used one VE-300X2 which is two separate probes controlling two separate zones-as I said, like two thermostats in one. We used one zone for the RHP and the second zone for the HM.

On the top cage, we used BOTH VE-200Ds-one for the RHP and one for the HM. This solved the clicking problem in the thermostats and I didn't expect to see any other differences...

...but I did. This was before we started using hygrometers to measure the humidity. I noticed that the condensation on the cage using the 300x2 was greater on the heated side than the heated side on the cage using the two 200Ds. This told me that the cage using the 300x2 (pulse style) was more humid than the cage using the two 200Ds (dimmer style).

...and then the skink in the bottom (300x2) cage shed.
We've had good sheds since they got here, but we've never seen such big pieces in tact before this shed. We got almost a whole tail out of this shed which told me that the humidity was much better in the 300x2 cage.

I also noticed that the temps were more stable in the 300x2 cage.

Obviously, we decided to order another 300x2 for the top cage.

In the process, we also acquired a hygrometer. This is our next step, but I CAN tell you that we left the house and the cages unmisted for two days. When we got back, the hygrometer read over 80% humidity ON THE DRY SIDE.