Not all heatmats are born equal...

 Not all heatmats are born equal.. well that is to say they are not made equal, a few years ago we started to get returns of a certain brand of heat mat. They had scorch marks in the surface, some had burn marks through the material, I wont name the make of heat mat but suffice to say you will no longer find them for sale on our website.

So whats the problem, well like i say not all heat mats are made the same. When buying a heat mat in the UK you will be faced with many different manufacturers and styles, but when you look closer there are really only two choices as there are only two methods used to produce a heat mat. so lets look at these methods and what is a heat mat,

What is a heat mat? Its two sheets of plastic with an electroconductive ink squashed between it, this ink joins up to wires which you plug into the mains electric. When you plug the mat into the socket and switch on electricity flows down the wires and through the ink, the ink causes the flow of electric to slow down (causes resistance) which makes the heat mat warm up.

In the highest quality heat mats the ink is printed onto a glass cloth and is referred to as carbon impregnated glass cloth, this then has two metal strips sewn onto the ends and joined to the wires before being sandwiched (laminated) in between sheets of adhesive.

The other style of heat mat has the ink printed straight onto a sheet of plastic, usually in strips (known as tracks), sometimes in very fine strips. this method of production is cheaper than the glass cloth method and has certain drawbacks as i will now explain.

These heat mats are made by printing ink onto a sheet of plastic, so basically you have a silk screen printing machine just like the sort that is used to do t-shirt screen printing, onto that an electronically conductive carbon ink is poured and then an operator stands there putting in sheets of plastic which the machine prints with the ink,

Now because carbon ink is expensive the boffins who design these try to get the maximum coverage of area with the least ink possible, thats why the printed heat mats have tracks (black lines) on them that run from one end to the other.

During the printing process ink builds up around the stencil and its the job of a skilled printer to monitor the print quality and wipe clean the stencil and remix the ink whenever neccessary, if this doesnt get done then tiny hair line bleeds get printed which connect the tracks up in places where they shouldnt do which changes the resisitance of the circuit. Also if the ink isnt changed at the right time it starts to go off causing an uneven print surface which also effects resistance.

Once they are printed and dried its some poor sods job to sit in front of a light box with a high powered loupe or looking glass and they have to look at all the tracks on the circuit to make sure there are no defects, it would typically be something like 1 in 100 circuits that get inspected, so plenty of room for faulty ones to get through. at some places every product is given a final test before being sent off but i can imagine this isnt the case for all factories, if these ink bleeds are missed it could malfunction causing it to melt or catch fire.

Because the cloth mats are basically a solid sheet of carbon you dont ever get this problem!

So how do you know which is which, well its quite simple, glass cloth heatmats are only made by one company and thats Eurorep, they sell them under the brand name Habistat and manuafacture them for Komodo and also Pro rep, anything else and it will be a printed plastic mat, some manufacturers are now laminating there mats in black plastic so you cant see the thin tracks inside but unless its one of those brands it will definately be a mat of lesser quality. Another give away is if its made in china as all of the Eurorep mats are made in the UK.

We currently sell both types of mats on our website, the Habistat ones I would advise every time, and we also stock printed ones made by Lucky reptile, as of yet we have had zero returns involving serious defects with these mats on both brands. So i am guessing luck reptile have better quality control procedures than the unnamed but unavailable from us brand of heat mats!

http://www.livefoodsbypost.co.uk/reptile-heat-mats-339-c.asp

Beardie feeding guide

Bearded Dragons (pogona vitticeps), beardies can be ravenous eaters but they can also be fussy at times! The trick to keeping your pet bearded dragon well fed is to vary the diet, Bearded Dragons are omnivores meaning they will eat vegetable matter as well as live insects so you need to be giving them ideally some fresh vegetables every other day (we will cover that in another guide but for this one we will stick to the livefoods).

As I mentioned earlier beardies can be faddy eaters going through favourites of one type of livefood and then refusing to eat it anymore! To conquer this behaviour in bearded dragons you need to vary the insects that they eat. Bearded dragons will eat virtually all of the livefoods we sell such as Crickets (black and brown), locusts, mealworms, waxworms, roaches, superworms and fruit beetle grubs. The only livefoods we sell that you would never need to feed to a pet bearded dragon would be fruit flies and micro crickets as they are too small. You need to feed appropriately sized insects to match your bearded dragon, so if your bearded dragon is a hatchling you would start off with small sized crickets and move up through the sizes as your bearded dragon grows until it becomes an adult and you are feeding it adult sized insects. The rule of thumb is only feed insects to your pet reptile that are as long as the reptiles mouth is wide to prevent the animal from choking on its prey. Although this is a good rule of thumb in practice its not always possible and reptiles are not overly burdened by chewing away on larger sized prey (just watch an adult bearded dragon munch up an adult locust).

When a bearded dragon is young it will eat crickets, locusts and roaches as a staple diet, for a yummy treat you can add in waxworms. As the Bearded dragon grows and is about 8-10" long they are usually developed enough to be able to manage harder to digest livefoods such as mealworms and super (morio) worms they will also be able to cope with larger treats such as fruit beetle grubs.

As i keep saying variety is the key to keeping your pet bearded dragon interested in its food and keeping it happy and healthy, the best way to achieve this would be with one of our multi buy livefood offers, if you have an adult bearded dragon I would recommend buying our six tub multi buy deal , if you were to choose 2 tubs of adult or extra large locusts, 2 tubs of large crickets, a tub of waxworms and a tub of either superworms or mealworms you should have the ideal hamper to keep your pet bearded dragon well fed for at least a week. When feeding my beardies i always rotate the livefoods that they get so one day they would have locusts, the next crickets and then the next meal or morio worms and then back to the locusts, every day I give them a few waxworms to keep them interested. You can sprinkle a few waxworms onto salad to encourage your beardie to eat his greens! YOu can also add into your bearded dragons diet some dubia roaches and as a really special treat some fruit beetle grubs, but you are best saving the fruit beetle grubs until hes an adult as they are quite big and juicy

Livefood Price increases from 1st February 2011

Price increases from 1st February 2011

Dear Customer,

Unfortunately I have to announce that we have increased our live food prices, the new pricing is as follows..

• 1 Tub = £4.95
• 2 Tubs = £8.00 (MULTI BUY)
• 3 Tubs = £10.00 (MULTI BUY)
• 4 Tubs = £12.00 (MULTI BUY)
• 6 Tubs = £15.00 (MULTI BUY)

(Prices include postage)

We have managed to hold our prices since 2006, but after 5 years of continually increasing costs unfortunately it has come to the point whereby we have had to pass an increase onto the customer. As you are all aware VAT has just increased, add to this the huge increases in fuel, electricity over the past five years, minimum wages have increased, food costs, packaging, and postage to name a few. It has now got to the stage whereby if we continue to sell live foods at £3.75 a tub we would soon be selling them at a loss. Add to this the increased number of “lost in post” parcels we have that are resent at our own expense it works out for every tub of live food that goes missing we have to sell another 23 tubs to pay for the missing one! Obviously we can not continue like this so faced with the decision of stop selling our livefoods online or passing on the increased costs we have opted for the latter. I hope you understand the reason behind this price increase and we would like to thank you for your previous and continued custom over the years.