Inquiry - Vision Cages

[Phil]

Hello. Vision is offering 48" X 26" X 14" cages right now for $199 shipped. I was going to order some, but then I realized I haven't heard anybody touting the merits of Vision cages lately. I've heard people praising Boaphiles, BARRS, Animal Plastics, and Percision, but not Vision. I even did a search on here and found more of the same, lots of praise for the other guys and not much to say about Vision.

I'd be keeping medium to large boas in these cages. If you've had any experiences with Vision cages I would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks for your time & God bless,
Phil Frost
ZNJ Exotics
[email protected]

 

[P.F.E]

vision cages

Hey just received my 400 about a 1/2 hour ago and I absoloutly love it. (So does my boa)

 

[gmherps]

I've always liked Visions, and will buy more.
I just bought 2 boaphile 4x2x11.5's and I have to say they're great as well!

 

[heiser]

If you plan on stacking them, the vision cages end up "drooping" in the middle and the sliding door get very hard to open. This happens even with the 36" cages and is just the nature of polyethylene/polypropylene materials. You will want to get the metal center braces to keep the cage square. I think (but not positive) that the 48s now come with the center brace. The 36s do not so make your own or buy some. The only other problem I have had with visions is with lizards that are insectivores. The crickets can walk right up the sides of visions due to teh rough texture of the plastic. I highly recommend Barrs cages for insect eaters but get something where the "dam" (height from floor to plexi door) is around 2" or more otherwise the lizards kick substrate into the door groove.

Regards,
John

 

[Pug]

I've had my #332 (36" x 28" x 18") cage for nearly a year now. The sliding glass doors scratch and offer high resistance when I slide them open. They also will fall out if I slide them into the middle and let go of them. The door tracks are always catching and filling with sand from inside the cage and it seems that no matter how clean I am they constantly fill up. The sand also leaks out when I close the door. When I first got the cage, I had to sand down a lot of sharp plastic pieces that weren't flush with the rest of the cage. I also had to cut some screws down to lay flush too. I'm not sure how to explain this, but the section where the glass doors are has an indentation on the top and bottom. My snake (a 2 foot western hognose) tends to climb up to the top part and then falls everytime she tries to climb back down, so I ended up putting a piece of particle board so she can climb down safely. The only good thing about the cage was its price, I paid $129 shipped.

After I finish paying off the important bills owe, I'm going to look into an Animal Plastics or a Boaphile cage.

 

[Tim Cole]

Visions

I have several sizes of Visions and overall I like them.

Cons:

Lip above door can hide a snake(bad for small or meduim venomous speces)!

Harder to clean than Neos.

Some are not stackable.

Door glass gap not suitable for smaller snakes.

Pros:

Lightweight and strong.

Some are stackable. Cheaper than systems requiring a rack.

I like them and will continue to buy them.

 

[Phil]

Stacking problem?

Hello. Thanks for all the feedback, it is much appreciated. Some of the drawbacks that have been mentioned don't apply to me since I'll only be keeping 5' - 7' boas in these cages. However, I am concerned with the stacking problem you mentioned John. My plan was to have two stacks of three or four, but it doesn't appear the 400 model has the center brace. The 422 model does, but is considerably more money.

There's a pic on the website that shows seven or eight of the new boa breeder cages (model 400) stacked, but now I'm wondering what will happen over time. Especially when you add some fat snakes into the equation.

Thanks again & God bless,
Phil Frost
ZNJ Exotics
[email protected]

 

[chondrogal]

visions

I have many assorted vision cage sizes also, mostly arboreal 222's 332's and the 400 series. One of the things I like about them the most is how easy they are to customize. Mine have holes for thermostat probes, perch holders and heat panels.

We have removed the heat shroud on the 222's, cover approximately 80-90 percent of the screen venting to raise humidity. Use 1" sheet foam insulation underneath, on sides and back of these cages.

Two good hints of mine to Vision owners. Make one hole in the top back corner of the cage for draining water when hosing outdoors, this hole doubles as location for thermostat probe for me. And... I cut styrofoam sheet to fit space above door slide. It keeps my nosy chondros on their perches!!

So, all in all I think I get great value for my money with the visions. I don't stack more than 2 high on any of the bigger cages though so sagging has not been a problem..... otoh my smallest the 111's are a biatch to get the doors in and out of for cleaning.

 

[Seamus Haley]

For what little it might be worth, I don't like them too much...

I've encountered the same drooping problem as others have described. If you're using any moderately heavy substrate or if the snakes themselves weigh more than about ten-fifteen pounds you'll eventually have problems in models without the center brace. I've run into a few which had sand used in them at one time which were truly useless, as the door required two people and a crowbar to move- obviously a slightly more extreme situation but...

You also sometimes get hot-spots when stacking. The fixtures for overhead lamps or ceramic heat emitters (if you're not just using flexwatt) are a good distance from the basking area they are aimed at, but mere inches below the floor of the enclosure above them. Depending on what kind of heating elements you're using, this can present a serious problem, as the bottom enclosure has a hot area at an ideal temperature but the one above it can be fifteen or twenty degrees hotter, even if it has no heating element of it's own.

The lip is terrible too... Outside of the potential danger from hots or the possibly painful experience with anything that might be hiding, I've seen boids wedge themselves in there pretty tightly... snakes don't get stuck anyplace easily but if you need to remove the animal for some reason, having it balled up between the door and the angled wedge hanging down from the top can be a pain. More worried about applying too much force to an animal and injuring it than it actually being stuck but it's a minor concern. The bottom lip is a pain as well- if your snake chooses a spot to let loose, for some reason with the entire space to choose from Murphy's law will put it under that fool thing and out of easy visual site. Getting it clean requires sticking your whole head in there as well.

The upside to the material is that it can be drilled or cut very easily for custom applications... downside to that is that it scratches fairly easily and leaves gouges that hold substrate or moisture and make cleaning a pain.

 

[David Bellis]

I owned a Vision for a matter of about 3 weeks and then sold it. I had all the same problems everyone else mentioned along with a couple more. They don't hold humidity worth a crap, even with a substrate that can absorb quite a bit of water. They also move around VERY easily due to their light weight. If one of your boas decides it doesn't want to come out and hooks its tail around the lower lip the whole cage will be coming at you with the snake.

I tried an Animal Plastics cage and now own 3 and a rack (and have more on the way).

Visions aren't terrible, but I think there are better cages out there.

 

[heiser]

Phil,

I use 332s that are stacked 3 high and have birdseed substrate or a 1/2" layer of sand (any more and I get the sand in the door track problems already mentioned). These are only 36" and still I have the drooping problem. They all have a 1/4" to 3/8" drop from one side of a door (there are two sliding glasses) to the other side of a door. This makes the door much harder to open than when they were new. Also, if you stack them and you have the spot/heat light "pocket" you will need to unstack them to change light bulbs or modify the tank. I drilled out the rivets holding the screen in the light "pocket" and I re-attached it from the inside so it can be removed from the inside and the bulb changed. You need to put srcews through from the outside and epoxy them in. Then you can use wing nuts on the inside to hold the screen in (thanks to Doug Dix for this tip).

So, I've done a lot of modifications to my visions and they still need more (a center brace). I still kinda like them but only for my uros. I would not use them for my dragons or ackies due to the cricket problem (they climb the sides and can escape through the doors and ceiling holes if you made any to install lights).

I have Barrs cages for my rhacodactylus and love the 24 x 24 x 24 but am so-so on the 20 x 20 x 20 due to the door opening being so close to the bottom of the tank. I can't use soil substrate in these or the dirt is in the door gap every day. I use bark susbtrate that doesn't fit in the (very small) gap tha door has when closed. I'm not sure how the thermoplastic they use would hold up to stacking with larger tanks. The 24" stack no problem what-so-ever. One word of caution with the Barrs, I used very strong UV lights (reptisun 5.0) over four of them for my Phelsuma guimbeaui and the plastic discolored and turned yellow. This (to a chemist) implies degrading of the plastic by UV and they probably become more brittle with time. I stopped keeping guimbeaui this year and hence stopped using the UV (the tanks now house small rhacs), so I can't describe the long term effect of UV on these.

Most plastics are affected by strong UV and even the polyethylene visions will be degraded some, but the Barr's discolored on top very quickly. The UV light was about 1" above the top screen. The inside of the tank was fine and only the top (outside) that was in very close proximity to the UV source was discolored.

Regards,
John

 

[supertiger]

I keep everything in visions. The only thing is that the only reason I do is because I got a good deal on them used. If I could afford it I would probably use something else. I really love the noes but we all know whats happened to them. That really sucks.

 

[Bci Joe]

I can't stand Visions anymore..lol
I thought they were pretty... and am pretty much right about that.. and that's all..lol

I bought a stack of 4 of the 6 foot monster cages with extra depth for my bigger boas..

In 2-3 months that I had them (took that long to get rid of them) none of my boas had one good shed, and some had bad sheds, due to the comment made before... "These things can't hold humidity worth a krap". I like that statement.

I had to buy and install seperate heating. I had to buy and install seperate lighting. It is a pain in the a s s to clean in there, all the way back, and/or under the litter dam.

The wells for the lamps create a tiny hot spot not worth a damn in my opinion. The ambient temps in there couldn't get above 78 even with the light on and heat blasting.

The ventilation is excessive and prevents achieving any reasonable humidity levels, unless, as stated before, you add/instal/drill/cut and so on ... again, more extra things to do/buy/install and so on...

The glass scratched and was hard to move back and forth. The middles drooped and so did the sides - they bowed out.

Instead of everything being reachable inside the cage, things are located on top, or on back.

I had a heat mat overheat, and it took me 2 hours before I finally was able to move the whole stack with each cage filled with breeding groups of 9 foot boas. It was virtually impossible and I damn near pulled my back doing it.
I reach into my boaphiles and turn stuff off, or pull a plug IF something ever happens, which is HAS NOT.

Same thing with the damn light fixture. I had a light blow - I had to go through moving the whole damn stack out, or, empty each cage of the breeding pairs, their water bowls and anything else of weight, THEN take off the glass panels, THEN lift the cage off of the other, then repeat until I got to the last one.... NOT FUN.. HOURS WASTED for NO REASON.

I bought some Boaphiles, then got rid of my Visions AT A LOSS, HAPPILY, and bought MORE Boaphiles.

I now have stacks and stacks of 4' Boaphile Platics and I CAN REARRANGE MY BOA ROOM AND MOVE EVERY WHOLE STACK AROUND THE ENTIRE ROOM BY MYSELF WITHOUT EFFORT, without removing anything, without pulling my back.... no risk of fire like I had before (The heat mat was BURNING the newspaper as I was trying to move that damn stack of visions), everything is easily inside within reach, INSTALLED FOR YOU, INCLUDED in the price, ELECTRIC ALREADY RUN FOR YOU, any color you want, shipping included, no extra parts, no need to worry, I can go on and on and on...

You can probably tell I have an extremely bad taste in my mouth from my Vision experiences...lol

When I first bought Boaphiles, guess what? I couldn't afford them either! I thought it was crazy to pay (back then) more for cages than my snakes were worth. Of course I wanted to save money, even if it was $10-$20. Well I think one main reason I have valuable snakes today is due to Boaphile cages.

After I did have my Boaphiles, I thought why would anyone possibly buy anything else ! Especially to save only a few bucks!

my story.. lol

take care, Joe

 

[MGReptiles]

Hey Joe,
could you post some pics of those monster cages? Also do you have any new feedback on them? thanks.
-MATT gRAYBEAL

 

[bcfos]

Considering I use a mixed bag of cages I can tell you Vision's look the best but do not last long at all. The longer 5 and 6 footers tend to sag very bad after as little as 3 months. Consider this my 8 foot neo I bought used and it is still in perfect condition and it has to be over 5 years old. If you keep hots I would recomend you have something besides Vision also. The doors are hard to open and close quickly and this could result in a nasty encounter with the business end of your snake if you keep an insane species like a Bothrops asper that like to "LAUNCH" themselves out of the cage. Also if you keep corn snakes forget vision, corns are escape masters and the gaps in the door of the visions are just too big. As for holding humidity well, they don't. I spray my neo's twice a week and they hold humidity very well, but the visions it is an everyday spray to keep the levels around 80%. My custom cages I found a local car stereo shop where they do a lot of custom work with plastics. This way I can specify what I want and bam I have it, also the price isn't that much more than buying a vision and having it shipped. Plus I know the quality will be above anything vision offers.

 

[bcfos]

Well I forgot my sig line with my name in it and we all know for some reason we can't edit our own posts so I will post again.