Vet says raise BTS temps urgently

If your vet has told you to raise temperatures urgently, that's a serious flag — blue-tongued skinks depend on heat for digestion, immune function, and basic metabolism, so a cool enclosure can snowball into real illness fast. Reptile welfare is almost entirely determined by getting the environment right: temperature gradient, UV lighting, humidity, and substrate all need to match the species' natural habitat, and getting any one of them wrong causes chronic stress and illness. To point you at exactly the right solution — how old is your skink, what heating setup do you currently have, and what temperatures are you actually hitting in the basking spot and cool end?

28°C at the basking spot is genuinely too low for a northern blue-tongue — they need surface temperatures of 40–45°C to properly thermoregulate and digest food. A standard basking bulb alone often can't get you there, especially in a larger enclosure. What size is the vivarium, and is it glass or wooden? That'll tell me whether you need more wattage, a different heat source, or both.

Right, so a 100w bulb in a 4x2x2 wooden viv should in theory be enough — the problem is likely where it's positioned or what surface it's heating. Blue-tongued skinks are ground-dwellers and they absorb heat through their bellies from warm substrate, not just from air temperature. What you need alongside that basking bulb is a deep heat projector positioned over the basking zone. My specific recommendation is the Arcadia Deep Heat Projector — the 80w version for your size enclosure. It emits infrared A and B radiation, which penetrates tissue and heats substrate surface temperatures to exactly where a BTS needs them, without blinding the animal or disturbing day/night cycles. Pair it with a pulse-proportional thermostat set to 42°C surface temp and you'll hit your vet's target reliably. Do you have a thermostat already, and are you using a temperature gun or digital probe to measure surface temps?

That's the gap right there. A probe thermostat measures air temperature at the probe location — it tells you almost nothing about actual surface temperature, which is what your skink is sitting on and absorbing. An on/off thermostat will also cause temperature spikes with a deep heat projector, which needs a pulse or dimming stat to run properly. So the full fix is: the Arcadia Deep Heat Projector 80w, a Habistat Pulse Proportional Thermostat to run it safely, and a temperature gun to verify your basking surface is actually hitting 40–45°C. The temperature gun is cheap — around £10–15 — and it will genuinely transform how accurately you can dial in the setup. Once you have the surface temp confirmed, your skink's behaviour and digestion should improve noticeably within a week or two.

You're in a good position now that you know what to fix — this is a very solvable problem. When you set it up, position the deep heat projector so it's heating a flat slate tile or similar dense surface directly below it, as that holds and radiates heat brilliantly for a ground-dweller. Set your pulse stat probe at substrate level in the basking zone and verify with the temperature gun once it's been running for a couple of hours. If your vet wants a follow-up, you'll be able to give them exact surface temperatures, which is exactly what they need to hear.