My own experiences with heat lamps.

[catcubus]

I can't speak for anyone other than myself. My two leopard geckos seem to absolutely love heat lamps. I noticed the week after I adopted them, I went the route of just using a heat mat under their tanks. They had regular appetites and bowl movements, but they seemed so sluggish all the time. The reason I never used a heat lamp was so many people voiced opinions over using one, claiming all they needed was a heating mat and a careful eye on the tank's temperature.

One thing that bothered me was they appeared to be losing weight. I fed them a diet of superworms (head's smashed or cut off) and crickets. Again, they ate up all their food, but they still didn't seem to be gaining weight.

So, I decided to add heating lamps to the cage. So far, they seem to absolutely love them, going so far as to go outside and bask on top of their hides and retreating back inside when they've had enough.

It's too early to say much of anything, but they do seem more active. I'm hoping that by the end of the week, they will have put on a little more weight.

 

[Embrace Calamity]

I noticed the same thing with my gecko as well. I actually kept her only with a heat lamp (no UTH) for the first 8 months or so that I had her, and she never had any difficulty digesting her food and ate like a pig. On the advice of others (lights hurt their eyes, it stresses them out, they only need belly heat, etc.), I switched to a UTH-only enclosure and she became much less active and rather sluggish. After a while I added a lower wattage heat lamp and she became very active and perky again. Granted, this was only my one experience with one gecko, but it was extremely obvious which she appeared to do better in, and common sense tells me warm air > warm surface, which is why I don't think I personally would keep them without some form of overhead heat. Some - people much, much more knowledgeable and experienced than I - use only UTHs and say theirs do just fine, so, you know, to each their own. *shrugs*

~Maggot