And I thought a backup thermostat was enough....

[MohrSnakes]

You know what sucks....overheating your snakes!

You would think having a backup thermostat in line incase the main one fails would be enough. In the very least, if the back up fails the main one should hold. I check my stupid thermostats just about every week to make sure they are all working and wouldn't you know it....I'm in the building Thursday night and everything is fine...but by the time I come Friday morning my python cage is overheated! SUCKS!!! Turns out BOTH the backup thermostat AND the main thermostat failed at the same time so the lights just stayed on...and who knows when...probably sometime in the middle of the night...enough time to get the cages nice and hot. Well, there are 6 cages with single snakes in each: 3 blood pythons, a burm, a boa and my 6ft black rat in the top cage just so het could stretch out instead of going in a rack. The black rat is dead. One of the blood pythons is not doing well. But fortunately, the rest of them seem to being doing okay. They were all on the 'cold' side of the cage when I found them and I immediatley opened cages to vent the hot air and changed the warm water to cool water. I even soaked the snakes in cooler water and that seemed to help. Now it is just a matter of time to see if there are any long term effects. One of the blood pythons had eaten the day before and did not regurge so I take that as a fairly good sign he didn't get too hot as I would imagine his body would do weird things and he may regurge. The blood python that isn't doing well is my largest so maybe she absorbed too much heat? And the black rat, well...he was the only colubrid in the set of cages and perhaps he just couldn't take the higher temps like the others? I don't know?

I'm very bummed and I'm not sure how I could have prevented it. Just about every thermostat in the building is a set of two...one main, one back up. Now I'm wondering if I need to do triples? This sucks!

By the way, for those of you who care, the type of thermostat I've used in the past are the Alife brand. Pretty much the same as the ESU ones as well. I have 20+ setup and I've been using them for years and they work very well. I've always been paranoid about them failing so almost all are doubled up...especially the lighted cages and incubators where overheating is much more a possibility. Any suggestions on better thermostats?