# Lighting Concern



## cardiologineer (Sep 29, 2012)

I have a desk lamp that is set up on a timer to go on at 6am and off at 7pm. Today when I woke up around 1pm (vacation :roll: ), I started getting up and ready and decided to peek in and see how much food Zannah had eaten last night. It wasn't until I was staring into a dark cage that I realized her light wasn't on. I fiddled with it and the timer and came to the conclusion that the light bulb must have burnt out.
Right now she's actually staying in a large enclosed playpen type thing that my mom bought for taking our cat outside during the summer (but never ended up using so she gave it to me for use as a travel cage). We are keeping the downstairs fairly warm and then I have a CHE resting on the top just to give a little extra warmth (and its been working really well and staying at about 75 degrees throughout the cage). I've also been putting a few blankets over the top, both to help keep some of the heat in (which also helps me not get too hot at night) and also to block the light from my view a little bit when it goes on so it doesn't wake me up. 
As soon as I realized the light was off, I took the blankets off and turned on the overhead light. But basically, I'm not sure where to go from here. I have checked on Zannah and she was sleeping and warm (although annoyed that I had woken her up). I'll go up and check if my mom has a light bulb as soon as I have posted this, but what do I do to get her light back on schedule? I tried searching this in the forums but came up with nothing aside from maybe a mention of a hedgie going into hibernation when their light burned out during the day. Should I just have her light go off at the normal time once I replace the bulb or what? I would worry that she would attempt hibernation because, if I have it go off at 7pm, she will only have gotten 6 hours of light today. :? 
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!


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## moxieberry (Nov 30, 2011)

Just go back to the normal schedule - one day of no light isn't usually a big deal. Our hedgehog room has no windows, and we've gone through some power outages here and there that have given them much more dark than usual, at least once it was pretty much a full day. (Space heaters get priority use of the generator!) The important thing is that you know the signs of a hibernation attempt already, and how to bring her out of it if you see it happening. Getting the normal light schedule back is better than messing with it to try to make up for the lost light time, which can just throw her off even more. If she's warm now, you probably won't have an issue anyway.


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## cardiologineer (Sep 29, 2012)

Thanks so much! She honestly seems to be pretty adaptable. Her poops have always been fine even after coming home with me and two trips back to my parents, as well as switching food. And she was fine one time when I woke up and saw her cage was at 70 degrees. I'll definitely keep an eye on her just to be safe but she seems to be pretty resilient so I'm definitely not worried now.


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## Erizo (Jul 25, 2012)

I wouldn't worry at all about a temporary issue with lighting. Temperature is far more important. I don't know if my girl ever comes out during the day. If the light was off she'd never know anyway. Just stick to the lighting schedule. Don't try to 'make up' any hours. 

I target 75 degrees so that I've got a good cushion on temperature. A thermometer that has a 'high / low' feature is handy. It lets you check not just the current temperature, but the high and/or low temperature since the last reset; i.e, the lowest temperature during the night. That's a very useful feature for making sure the CHEs are dialed in. I only reset weekly because we're dialed in pretty tight; very little very variance in temperature.


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