Be calm, be gentle, and don’t cook your spider.

I love this, I'm familiar with the reptile heating stuff and the "if you're comfortable then your spider is comfortable" Always made me uneasy.

i think its important to remember that we all have different environments ourselves and come from different areas of the world. the radiant temps experienced by each individual should definitely be used in determining external heating requirements.

Quite brave walking around THAT room barefoot! I couldn't do it!

Brilliant video very informative very useful especially for us newbies.

I got two basic principles from this video. 1) Let your resident choose how much heat it wants, and 2) Forget what the heater's called, just ask if it can do the job you need done. Both are excellent, no matter what animals you keep. Thanks for sharing you experience.

Thank you so much for this! 🥰
I dont understand why most people do not use extra heat for their tarantulas, as you said, they're from warmer places, it kind of speaks for itself 🙃

My partner phoned me to say you will like this episode.  "Different ways of eating your spiders".😮😮😮😮

In Illinois I keep mine in the living room on one of those rolling wire racks. For the winter I cover them up with a full vinyl zipper cover that has a clear front and I set them over one of my heating vents with a tray of water so they get bursts of heat about every 10 minutes. The heavy cover helps hold it all in. It worked really well for me and kept the temperature between 72 and 80F for the winter which isn't too bad. Now that it's summer the rack is by a window which gets some sun for about an hour in the morning and residual heat from the outside all day.

Thank you for this detailed explanation. I was keeping a jumping spider but since getting my first T and Velvets I've struggled to understand what on earth I'm doing with heat mats, especially with placement of the sensor, I had it against the mat and my temp readers at the front. Was stressed to hell trying to figure out why I couldn't get to temp in my enclosures and amazed I didn't cook them. Shall definitely be buying a pulse stat now.

I keep my spiders in my bedroom I use lava lamps near one end of their enclosures and they will sit on that ends at times other times they will stay in their burrow. they have a choice and it seems to work well.  Plus the lava lamps look nicer and are dimmer than a heat lamp. during the day they get natural not direct sunlight

Valuable information as always. Thank you for all you do. It helps so many of us.

A whole room is my next step.With the warm.water fish tanks included 😂

I use a 25w led heat lamp for 2 enclosures so it only heats a corner in each enclosure. I measured the temps in each corner and it never goes above 30 ° C. My spiders seem to love it and i have no issues with drying the enclosure out or overheating.

Thank you for this video. I needed this video. As to i live in south africa and we in winter now and are worried about my t's in this cold. I them all in my cupboard thinking it would help. As i dont have a heater in my house

With the laser measurement be careful with the emissivity of the surface material, it must match the value programmed in the laser thermometer if not the reading might not be ok.
Love your videos, greetings from Portugal 🇵🇹

If I had a room dedicated to my Ts I'd definitely do it the same as you guys!

I personally only have around 30 and on a nice wooden custom built shelving rack. I heat mine with lights on a heating dimmer so the heating comes from above like in nature. They all seem to come out and bask and then go hide when they need to be cooler.

It all depends on the set up I suppose.

Just watched your video on heating for spiders.
Being new to keep spiders I found it very helpful especially about pulse thermostats.
Many thanks
Shaun

Thanks for this video, Dave. I want to get a tarantula (or several), but I have heat intolerance and am very uncomfortable in temps above 68F/20C. Most American tarantula hobbyists are emphatically anti-heating-mat (probably because indoor A/C and heating are ubiquitous and quite good here), but I live in a small apartment, and heating a whole room isn't an option for me unless I want to be completely miserable. I was really thinking that I might just have to put my future spiders next to my gaming PC to keep them warm. But if heating mats can be used safely, then that's great news to me.

I met a reptile keeper who made a shelf system for his boxed snakes using a cupboard with thick shelves. He had routed out a channel at the back of each shelf and laid the heat line used in fridge door seals in it. He said it sat at about 28c. Admittedly as a fridge mechanic he had easy access to the seals but anyone can buy it on a roll. He was happy with the result and it looked so neat because there was no cords or mats to be seen and it only heated the back of each box so they could move away if they wanted.
When I had spiders, centipedes and scorpions I had them a bit on heat mats in the winter but always used two thermostats hooked up together so if one failed, the other would still cut off power (overheating was more the issue for me as I live in the subtropics.