Heat advice needed quick!! :(

[Evil Angel]

I need some advice quite urgently!

I am making a new home for my tigers and Fulica's from a very big storage box, I've attached my heat mat and polystyrene insulation, with it turned off the tank is 18-20C, with it on the temps reach 22-24, I was hoping for 25-30, as I read that is ideal for tigers, should I drill holes in side of tank where heat mat is to raise temps (considering it'll get a lot hotter in summer, and if I raise temps to 25-30 in winter, when summer comes I could be looking at temps raising to 30+ and some cooked snails!)? I REALLY don't know what to do?

Advise needed urgently as I have to move them into this new home today, so need to know whether to drill holes or not!

Thanks for your time!

[Evil Angel]

Thinking about drilling just a couple of holes, so only a bit more heat gets in, try and get the temps to 25C as I don't want it to get too hot for my Fulicas tbh, maybe that's the answer? Then it'd be ok if it heated up to 28-30c in summer, if it gets hotter than that I could just unplug the heat mat during the day!

[coyote]

I'm not sure what the answer is. Maybe drill holes that can be covered up easily if there are too many of them?

[ness]

Yes I'd go for drilling the holes, but drill them on one side so that you get a tank that is tiger temperature at one end and warm at the other. To be honest I find that MOST fulica adjust well to higher temperatures, though this isn't garunteed. They will stay at the cooler end though if they don't like the heat.

[latebloomer]

You can get a mat stat that would turn it off once it reached your programmed temperature