Page 5 - The Wonders Of Light.indd

P. 5

Summary: enables the animal to freely move around and
choose at which level they wish to sit at. You
In summary think back to that hi-fi system. can easily map out an enclosures UV levels with
To get a good quality sound you need all the instruments such as a Solormeter.

different types of speakers. The tweeters (UV)
for the higher pitch, the mid range speakers for
the main bulk of what we hear (the visible light)
and the subwoofer (infra-red) for that deep

bass sound. Now imagine what would happen
to that quality of sound if you took one of those
away? The same principle can be applied when
designing the heating and lighting setups to

your enclosures.
FIGURE 7 – Examples of ledges, hides and bushes to break-up the UV
The Implementation
In the image above (figure 5) you can see how
Now we have understood what the full I use different distances, ledges, burrows and
spectrum is and what benefits it can provide bushes to create different areas of UV levels.
how do we incorporate this into our enclosures?

Well actually its relatively simple if planned out Visible Light:
well. There are many different methods just as
good to achieve the same outcome, but what With the exception of the light emitted from the
I will explain below is how I have personally basking lamps and UV source most of the visible

implemented it. It’s important to remember that light spectrum is not usually included directly in
it’s not just about choosing the correct lamps to our enclosures. This can be simply added with
use but also about setting the enclosure up to the addition of LED lamps. Dependent on the
make use of them properly. size of the enclosure you would need a number

of lamps across different colour temperatures.
UV: Since the basking lamps are generally around the
3000K and T5 tubes around 7000K+ you want to
This area is generally well understood and the aim for a mixture of LED lamps between 4000K

advancements in technology now allows us to and 6000K.
choose from a huge range of products to enable
us to properly pick and measure the correct It’s worth looking for LED lamps that have a wide
levels of UV. beam angle so you get a good spread of light

from each lamp. The ones I personally use are
However, what is often missed is the need 6W GU10’s with a beam angle of 120 degrees and
for there to be varying levels of UV within an a lumen output of between 500-600. I normally
enclosure. This can be achieved in a number of split the number of lamps evenly between

ways such as providing hides, ledges, plants etc 4000K and 6000K lamps (see figure 5). Find the
at differing distances from the UV source. This ones with the highest lumens rating you can

1 2 3 4 5 6 7