People visit our showroom or website often after being told they need a reptile bulb, sadly there are a great number of people who when purchasing their reptiles were not made aware of exactly the type of bulb they needed and perhaps just bought the first bulb labelled for "reptile" use. However its not as simple as that.
In this short guide I will try and explain what bulbs are "reptile" Lights and what are not,
First of all when someone says " I need a reptile light" it is because they have been told they need to give their reptile UVB Exposure, In these instances what is required is either a UVB flourescent strip light with a 5% content or higher, or a UVB compact lamp with 5% content or higher, UVB Mercury vapour bulbs or UVB metal halide's.
A common mistake made is to purchase a lamp that is labelled as for reptile use such as a daylight bulb or daylight strip light, sometimes these are even incorrectly sold to people by inexperienced sellers in the mistaken belief that these daylight lamps produce UVB. They do not produce enough UVB exposure to prevent calcium disorders in reptiles.
These daylight lamps do however produce UVA which does nothing for vitamin D3 production but they do create a bright enclosure which is beneficial to a reptiles feeling of well being but they do not produce any UVB exposure.
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