Light and CHE wattage

[Kathy_D]

i am starting to gather everything we will need to bring a bearded dragon home in the next few months. I have a 40 gallon breeder for now. I have two questions:
1) We keep our house around 68-70 degrees so I think I will need a CHE at night. What wattage should I start with to adjust to a good night time temp?
2) I am getting a 10 UVB T5 bulb, 22" (as close to 2/3 as I can get in a T5 bulb). I will obviously also get a basking light but I keep getting hung up on the wattage to start with. I was thinking 100 watts, does this sound reasonable?

Thanks! I'm so excited to get the set up all together and bring home a new beardie!

 

[Eavlynn]

1. So long as the enclosure doesn't drop below 65F, you should be fine without a CHE.

2. The wattage depends on a variety of factors: room temp, airflow, distance of the basking area from the light, etc. I used a 100watt in my 40 gallon to get my basking temp around 105F when it was 10 or so inches away from the light, but the room stayed around 80F. You just have to play around with wattage until you get the temps where you want them. It's good to keep extra bulbs on hand, too, in case the temps in the room drop, or go up. That way you aren't scrambling to buy new bulbs on short notice.

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[Hdrydr31]

Ditto ^^^ you will just have to go trial and error and just adjust height and wattage in small increments. Also don't worry if you end up with all sorts of bulbs lol most of us have quite a few.. lol

 

[PatsyB]

I would get the lowest wattage CHE you can find, it doesn't sound like you are going to need to use it much. We keep our house around 71-72 and the tanks at night on the coldest nights here get down to 65degrees sometimes even 64. We don't use a CHE and they are fine. I also went with a 36" UVB bulb. As long as you provide places for them to get away from the UVB it's not going to hurt them to have the whole tank covered.