The lighting of your terrarium depends on the light requirements of your animals:
- Do your animals need a lot or little light?
- Do your animals need UV radiation or not?
- Do your animals need a different temperature during the day than at night?
- How far away are your animals from the light source?
By answering these questions, you can decide which type of lamp and possibly additional heating mat your animals need. Lamps such as the JBL Reptil Day Halogen are ideal for illuminating terrariums with plants. If the animals require additional UV light, a JBL UV-Spot Plus or a JBL L-U-W lamp is additionally required. These also simultaneously produce heat. For animals not in need of UV light, such as many amphibians, the JBL Reptil Day Halogen or JBL LED Daylight are ideal and may, depending on the animal, need to be supplemented with heat-generating technology. For amphibians from colder regions simply omit the heat-generating technology.
Nature as a model:
Terrarium animals are cold-blooded animals, which are strongly dependent on light, particularly on the quality and intensity of the light. Activity, food intake, digestion or rest phases are influenced by the change of day and night and the intensity of light. Depending on the light source, there are differences in output and quality of the light. Besides this, many terrarium animals associate light with heat and seek light places in the terrarium in order to „bask in the sun“. These considerations are especially important when choosing heating equipment for desert terrariums.
Depending on their origin, terrarium animals can require a lot or a little UV light for their well-being. UV-B stimulates the synthesis of Vitamin D3 from its preliminary stage Vitamin D2. UV-A stimulates pigmentation. Don’t forget that glass absorbs around 50 % of the UV radiation, so always install the lamps inside the terrarium.