Re: Digest Number 587

For those mercury vapor bulbs, I have seen them used in regular clamp lights and seen the clamp lights with the plastic sockets melted and distorted by them, and also seen other ones that became gray and brittle… I don’t use anything so hot with my own animals, so I have no problems (I use reptisuns and then regular clamp lights with household bulbs up to 60 watts for heat spots). The packaging on one of the brands of mercury vapor bulbs actually says to use certain socket types (ceramic). I’m not trying to be a nay-sayer or negative, just giving fair warning for safety’s sake. The ceramic ones can be bought as hardware items, they don’t HAVE to be bought from a pet supplier. In fact the pet supply ones are the same as the hardware types (if you can find the ceramic socketed hardware type), just packaged and with added price for the pet trade.