Viv Stack heating

I'm in the process of building new viv stacks but want advice on heating.
I'm going to be keeping corns and royals.

the cheap solution

as i said the other day mate,if it was just for corns you could just run a heatmat along the back of the vivs,but royals are going to need a hot spot to bask on.You could place a heatmat under each viv,so it would be on the roof of the one underneath.Or ofcourse get youself a router and get some heat tape,but ive seen your DIY :P

Personally, I would (and do) keep corns and Royals in seperate stacks, as their needs are slightly different, although corns are very forgiving.

If you could afford it, I would say ceramics are probably the best way to go for Royals, as it is hard to keep the ambients up enough for them with heat mats. My royals are racked/tubbed with heatmats and I have had to heat the whole room for them.

My corns have heatmats in their vivs. I have tiled over them with cermaic tiles and siliconed them in aswell, so that the corns can't lay directly on them, and the mats can't get wet. It works well, and as the tiles conduct heat well, it keeps the ambients in the vivs up nicely too. Not really enough for Royals though, IMO, hence my royals are in a different room.

Hoping that makes sense, am very tired today!

Thanks for the advice.
I will be keeping the corns and royals in different stacks.
Might try the heatmat under the lower viv for the corns anyway to see how it goes at first but want a few ideas before I start putting them together.

PS My DIY isn't that bad

Ikea have this in a variety of colours , [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] . It's also £20 cheaper in the store than advertised here . Thought it might be good to turn into a viv stack .

Was actually thinking of using these for the corns
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St3ve76 wrote:Was actually thinking of using these for the corns
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Seen that one as well but it's only 2ft wide so you would need to upgrade to a bigger one later on whereas the other one is 3ft and would do corns , kings etc., for life . It's also only a few quid dearer as like i said it's £20 cheaper in store than they advertised .

hi mate. i buit a stack about a year ago, i used sheets of conti board i picked up in b&q it wasn't that expensive for the wood, the most expensive part was the glass but that's probably because i used 6mm stuff in the bottom as i have two young boys. i use heat mats in all of the viv's then i made a false floor out of perspex and sealed it in with aquarium silicone and it has seemed to work ok. my stack consists of a base viv @w36 d24 h 24 and then a stack of four vivs@ w36 d15 h15 i think the wood, screws, vents, light fittings and cables and glass runners cost me about £110 then the glass cost me about £124, i probably could have got it cheaper but i couldn't be bothered pricing around.

Marty