regardless of actual heat waves or not, my mom tries her absolute best to refrain from using our air conditioning. finally yesterday convinced her to let me turn it on since was going to feel lie +39 while everyone was at work and would have no one monitoring my 5 month old panther. that morning before we turn it on I woke up with the cage being 82 with no lights on and it only to get warmer during the day. over the past week when im not home and someone else is I call and try and get an update and get them to mist for me and theres been times temps have been near the 90s no one has ever told me they have seen him gaping nor have I ever seen him gape, i know its pretty warm. they would mist and normally raise the bulb higher. usually colder spots of the cage is 5-7F cooler during the hot spells. from these scenarios does it seem like i have much to worry about? humidity levels are fine. im hoping now when i can expect dramatic heat waves to get the AC on. I told my mom to move light down if its below 80 and up above 86 if shes home and if a mist hasnt been given recently.
Its weird though, both my brother and mom would say his dark though even when its hot, my mom claims hes always basking when she sees him, I kinda assume she catches him at the wrong times or maybe tells me that after a misting and his warmig up, light is no where near close enough to cause burns, its simply just hot.
any ideas for cooling at night when ac isnt in use is also great
Its weird though, both my brother and mom would say his dark though even when its hot, my mom claims hes always basking when she sees him, I kinda assume she catches him at the wrong times or maybe tells me that after a misting and his warmig up, light is no where near close enough to cause burns, its simply just hot.
any ideas for cooling at night when ac isnt in use is also great
I had the same problem, he was displaying "cold" colors but really was his stress colors and he would gape occasionally. I felt so bad for those almost 2 days it took to figure out what was wrong. The worst was coming to realize night temps never dropped that evening. I guess I would do the portable AC as mentioned. I keep my AC up pretty high 78-79F, up the misting to 5x day (instead of 4x), hand mist or turn on his cool humidifier for an hour or two and I have a desk fan going most of the time. I found a balance using all these things to keep basking, ambient, night temps and RH spot on. So far so good. So good luck to you 
