OP PLZ
Comment on Do snakes prefer to drink warm or cool water?
Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days agoI have been thinking that all day. But to do it properly I need a bigger terrarium and some more supplies. You can’t have the dishes be different sizes or that’s an additional variable. But I also want to keep a big enough dish that they can soak in it. The never actually do because I keep the humidity high enough but they chould still have the option.
So I need to have a large terrarium with several identical water basins all in the same area. 3 basins would work (warm, room temp, and cool) but ideally I would have several set to various specific temps. Each basin should be able to be heated and cooled to reach a set water temp and which basin has which temp of water needs to be shuffled ocasionally to eliminate selection based on exact basin location or similar variables. That heating and cooling could easily be acheived with a peltier module and a temp sensor on each basin linked to a controller. You would also need a camera to view which basin the snake actually uses.
Of course I already know what would happen. I would spend a couple hundred dollars setting all that up only to learn that my single braincell possessing snake would only ever use the closest basin.
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Unfortunately I don’t think the $20 I have in the bank right now will cover the cost of the test rig.
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Go fund me
lordnikon@lemmy.world 6 days ago
A few more variables to think about is you would have to keep the heated water at that warmer temperature the whole time. Plus also noting the ambient temperature to graph with each event.
Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Oh yeah, basically the easiest way to do it would to pump water out of each basin, through a heat exchanger, and then back into the basin. That way you could have your whole temp control aparatus located outside of the terrarium. Plus that would also easily enable automatic water level management to keep the water levels identical. For your heat exchanger you could just use a CPU water block and a peltier device. You regulate the power going to the peltier device by monitoring a temp sensor in your water return pipe and just pulsing the peltier device on and off at different rates to control the heating or cooling rate. Plus with the peltier device you can just reverse the polarity to switch from heating to cooling to enable the shuffling of the basins. All of this would be controlled and charted in a csv file by a raspberry pi. Additionally you could connect a simple motion sensor so the pi could flag the times the snake was using one of the basins to make it easier to read the data.
Rather than monitoring ambient temp or humidity you would probably be better off just keeping them tightly controlled and constant via other systems. That would further reduce variables for the initial test.
lordnikon@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Very true on the second part I mean you have to do that anyway for the reptile .
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 days ago
for the record, if you happen to be near a zoo with a snake house (or that has snakes,) you could probably ask the zookeeper. If they didn’t know already they have snakes and probably wouldn’t mind setting that up. (they also probably have multiple identical dishes and such like.)
well. I suppose that could be an email, if you happen to be not close. But if you are, I’ve never met a zookeeper that didn’t love to talk about their animals and answer random questions like that.