Was that title pompous enough for you? Well thats how I roll!
Anway....
After months of research, question asking, pricing and mental anguish (ok not too much anguish), I finally decided on and purchased a new rack for my adult Ball Pythons. My criteria were simple, I wanted a breeder quality, steel framed rack that could grow with my collection and take up a minimal amount of space. Just an aside really quickly. I am not going to speak about pricing of the products as this can be found on any of the vendor sites mentioned in this review. I am going to focus on configurations offered and the quality of the product chosen. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming… In the end, it came down to three vendors:
The first was Freedom Breeder (FB). Obviously, everyone is aware of the quality of their products and that is why they are used by some of the top breeders out there. The pricing on them is not outrageous (from my point of view) and they come in a three across configuration or a 10 high rack with a single tub per level. They are also sold per level (I believe just the three across is but I can’t say for sure) so that someone can build a rack slowly as the need arises. The biggest downside and what eventually stopped me from purchasing from FB was that it would cost a minimum of $250 to ship from California to New Jersey. For me to order 3 levels, $250 seemed outrageous to me. Now in FBs defense, they ship freight and that is a 3000 mile trip, so no wonder it’s so pricey.
The next company I looked at was Kreature Keeper (KK). Their product is very similar to FBs (from what I can tell on a website) and so is their pricing. Unfortunately, their customer service was poor. I could only get a voicemail and never received a call back. I also sent numerous emails and only one was answered. I never did manage to get a price on shipping but by this point I had given up on them.
I remembered that on another forum, someone had asked about American Rodent Supply (ARS) racks. Only one person had seen it in person and but he didn’t like the tubs with the built in water bowl holders and that they weren’t open air designed like FB. Since my snake room was having low humidity issues, I felt open air might be more of a hindrance than help. Anyway, I found the thread and went to the website (
www.arscaging.com). I was immediately impressed with the way the racks were described and the full color images showing the tubs, heating and construction. Please note that the ARS racks can also be purchased by the level for either the three across configuration or the single tub per level model. I emailed Brian Hahn (the owner of ARS) on Saturday with some questions and he emailed me back a few minutes later to let me know he was in the office and would be happy to talk to me on the phone and answer any of my questions. I called him and he was happy to spend almost 30 minutes discussing every aspect of his racks. I came away from the call psyched and feeling like I had found the product I wanted to purchase. My feeling was, if his product quality was anywhere near his customer service attention, I would be a happy camper! He and I conversed throughout the week on email as I had many more questions that I had forgotten. ARS was originally just a supplier of frozen rodents but about 8 months back (I believe that was the number) Brian began manufacturing his own racks. I searched all the message boards out there and it appeared that nobody had purchased these racks yet. I called Brian back and he provided me with the name and number of a customer in Buffalo that has his racks in his breeding operation. I called the reference and was given a glowing review. The guy owned both FB racks and ARS racks and said the ARS was just a little better than FB in every way. On Thursday I placed my order with Brian. He was pretty sure that he could get the rack shipped out on Thursday evening for Friday delivery via Greyhound service to my local station (cost was $100 for shipping/packaging). He called me late Thursday afternoon to tell me that the only rack he had left had gotten beaten up and he wasn’t comfortable sending it out to me. He promised me that he was getting more in that evening and he could ship Friday. On Friday I got an email with my tracking # and that it would be in Newark, NJ on Saturday AM. I waited with anticipation and called the Greyhound station at 10:30AM this morning. They advised me that it had not come in and after a bunch of phone calls aimed at tracing where it was; they found out that it had gotten hung up in transit. Apparently, weekends are a busy time for taking the bus (who knew?) and if they had a bus full of passengers at any stop, they would take off the packages to make room for baggage and then put them on the next bus. Long story short, they called me at 5:00PM to let me know the boxes were in. I had them picked up and home by 8:00PM and the rack was unpacked and put together by 9:00PM (and even most of the packing peanuts cleaned up, except for the 8 million now residing under the couch). So here we go with thoughts and pictures.
First thought, the boxes were packed very well. Each box contained 2 levels, 2 tubs and a mess of packing peanuts. One of the boxes also contained the base frame and the casters. Everything is VERY heavy duty down to the casters. The entire 5 boxes weighed in at 255 pounds total (try lugging that up 2 flights of stairs alone). The assembly of the entire rack took under and hour and required no tools. Each level easily slid into the one below it. Stupid me, I got through 6 levels and realized I put the base frame backwards so I had to remove each level until I got down to the frame and then reassemble. Now on to the rest of my thoughts:
Frame: The frame is heavy steel and is powder coated for durability. As Brian describes on his site and as you will see in the pictures, it looks so streamlined that you don’t really see where one level ends and the next begins. The tubs slide easily in to the rack and nicely make contact with the heat. Also, each level instead of being completely open air has a series of holes that have been drilled in the metal. Less towards the back of the tubs and then more at the front (and the holes neatly spell out ARS). The frame also comes with a bracket at the top to hold a Helix (in my case it will hold a Herpstat temporarily until I get a Helix).
Heat: The 4” flexwatt strips are mounted to the bottom of a piece of metal. The metal then has Velcro on the edges to attach easily to the frame. I chose to pay an extra $35 (ignore where it says $75 on their site, that is a typo) to have each piece of flexwatt wrapped on the underside with Reflectix to keep the heat radiating upwards where it should be.
Tubs: Brian manufactures his own tubs. He has dark grey and semi clear. Both can be ordered with or without water bowl holders that neatly hold a 16 oz deli cup. The water bowl holders are molded into the plastic rather than siliconed in. I initially chose semi clear without the holders since I had just purchased a bunch of couplers from Home Depot. Brian called me to let me know that he had run out of the semi clear without holders and didn’t have a run scheduled yet. He had the dark grey without the holders but there is something I don’t like about leaving the snakes in total darkness all of the time. In the end, I chose the semi clear with holders and Brian let me know that he would work something out with me if I didn’t like them and wanted the ones with no water bowl holder.
Overall thoughts: I am so pleased with the construction of the rack, the heavy feel (I can climb it and I am *ahem* 6’2 and 260lbs), the ease of assembly, the heat and the tubs! From start to finish this has been a great experience! I give a big thumbs up to ARS and Brian Hahn! Thanks Brian!
That all said, I have NOT hooked the heat up yet. It got late and I didn’t prepare very well. Now that I have 10 tubs, I have to get a power strip to hook all the heat into before plugging in to the Herpstat. I will update this review tomorrow once I get the heat powered up and stabilized and get the snakes in their new homes. I will probably post some more pictures. I hope this was informative and not too long winded! Anyway, here are the pics and feel free to ask any questions!
Boxes..Woohoo...
Open box..Peanuts..I swear it gets better..
One level with the heat strip removed from the velcro and turned over. See the Reflectix? Weeeee..
The heat strip as it attaches to the level
The tub!
Casters..Ok not so exciting...
Base frame..uhhh..
Its together...No tubs in there yet.
Side view
The final product...
very nice!
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