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What do you use for housing your reptiles & why?

Let people know what we use

  • Racks Systems

    Votes: 108 39.0%

  • Plastic Caging

    Votes: 68 24.5%

  • Melamine Caging

    Votes: 47 17.0%

  • Wooden Cages

    Votes: 61 22.0%

  • Rubbermaid Tubs

    Votes: 56 20.2%

  • Sterilite Tubs

    Votes: 80 28.9%

  • Glass Tanks

    Votes: 130 46.9%

  • Other ...?

    Votes: 32 11.6%
  • Total voters
    277
Oh how I wish this was true. I can't wire those, hubby can't, urgh!
Click to expand...
Sure you can!
It adds $1.20 or so to the total for a heater, but if you can't solder you can use the metal connectors made for the purpose.
I have a Flexwatt wiring page that describes how to do it. It's very simple, and only takes a few minutes.
 
Clay,
I have looked for flexwatt on the internet and from what I can see you have to buy in bulk. I don't need that much flexwatt that it would ever pay for me to buy a hundred feet of it. If you know where I can get it for 4.50 a foot without having to buy in bulk I would be interested. Where can you get a thermometer gun?
thanks
mark
 
The Bean Farm among other places sells Flexwatt by the foot. Eleven inch wide runs $3.75 I do believe.
The Bean Farm
The $4.50 price I mentioned included the power cord which you must supply. They run 0.79 or so at Wal-Mart.

As for temp guns, my personal preference are the raytec models with the laser. These are somewhat more expensive than some models, but I like them.
I know I bought mine for I think $100 a few years ago, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them as low as 60 lately. Either way they've come way down over the last 5+ years.
There is a new mini temp gun available now for $25. Reptile Basics and Pro Exotics both sell those I believe. I haven't used one myself, but I have talked to Richard at Reptile Basics about them and he said they were a fine instrument for the money.
Temp gun from Reptile Basics - $29.50 shipping included.
I'll keep an eye out for a dealer of the Raytecs like I use, but I can't think of anyone off the top of my head that sells them, since I haven't been looking for any.
 
For those of you using custom made rack systems, what do you generally use as a thermostat?

I have built my own rack, which has five shelves on it. I have my heat tape all set up on each shelf, wired and everything. Now I just need to find a thermostat for the tape.

I was looking into the various ones, and most seem to only have 1 plug, so it would only be able to control one strip of flex watt. The best I found was a thermostat with three plug in's. They where 35$ each. Either way, the thermostat part becomes pretty costly.

Is it possible to hook up one of those power cord strips (those things that have 6 plug ins) into the plug in of the thermostat, and then plug the strips into that? Or does that not work correctly then?
 
When I set up a rack I wire all the shelves together so that there is only one plug to power the entire rack.
If the rack is larger of course I may wire it where there's two circuits total or what have you, but either way, I don't wire each shelf with it's own plug.

You can use a power strip, but the problem you run into is the strips are grounded and most of the cheaper thermostats you will see won't accept a three prong plug. You don't want to get into using a bunch of splitters or extention cords either.

I use ZooMed Repti-Temp 500R thermostats on some racks, while on others I may use a Helix. I also have a Big Apple proportional thermostat in use. Alot of people brag on the Ranco models as well, but I haven't used these myself.
If you consider $35 to be costly for a thermostat, then you are in trouble. Try looking at it this way, if the cheap thermostat fails and kills your animals, or worse yet sets the house on fire, was the small savings on the initial setup worth it?
 
35$ is no problem, or costly, but having to buy 5 of them (1 for each shelf) is 175$. Which is pretty costly to heat 1 shelf. In that case I might just as well buy a helix, which I planned to do anyway, just not yet. Actually, add in the cost of the shelf supplies and I could have simply bought an animal plastics for the same price with no time spent building it.

I used the strips only because I had them though already. I do have more longer ones, so maybe I will simply run 2 strips, instead of 1 on each shelf.

No big deal either way, I was just trying to figure out a way to use all five plug ins.

Has anybody used a helix? Are they easy to wire into?
 
ahhh, I was originally thinking that, but did not think I could do it. Obviously I am not much of a wiring knowledgable person! lol. That will work out perfect for me then. Thanks a lot!!
 
I answered wooden cages. I am purely a "pet owner" and wooden cages fit into my decorating scheme much better than anything else. I looked at the other options, but did not like them aesthetically, so I started looking into what it would take to make the wooden cages last a long time and be energy efficient and then designed my own cages and had my husband build them for me.

I do own one glass tank, currently empty, which was the "starter tank" for my JCP. It has been empty since the JCP was moved to the adult-sized wooden enclosure, but I still keep it in case it comes in handy as a starter tank for another animal...

- Jackie Gerth
 
While on the topic about heat tape for the moment. Does anybody know where I can get those little alligator clip things that you get with the heat tape? I need about 10 of them. No department / electric store in my area carries them.
 
The Bean Farm sells the clips individually. I think they are abotu 60 cents each if I remember correctly, I don't use them myself.
Here's the link to their site.
The Bean Farm

The clips are in the heating supplies section of their catalog.
 
I am looking to buy or build a habitat for Bearded Dragons that is attractive enough for my living room. I've surfed Iguana sites and see all the energy people put into providing appropriate enclosures for them .. Not too much available for desert species in the retail market.
If anyone has ideas, cage plans or links to something other than cagesbydesign or customcages - drop me an email!

The cabinetry is probably the most important feature. Something to hold supplies and look perfect with the rest of the room decor. Nothing rustic looking , which seems so prevelant.
It would be nice to have a hood to hide the lighting , but ventilation is a concern

When i have friends and family over that are ZERO fond of reptiles, i want my herps to be displayed in an attractive setting that takes the " yuck" factor out of reptiles and replaces it with,
" Oh, how amazing they are!" :)

Wishful thinkin' ?
 
Housing and heating reptiles

I have spent the past twenty five years away from the hobby and an recently getting back involved, it is soooo much easier with adult children and disposable income, LOL. What an amazing herp world it is out there!! When I was 20, there was no internet and no availablilty to have this discussion! Thank you to Clay for all of this great infomation!!
 
We had been using glass tanks but are slowly switching all of our dragons to custom made melamine enclosures as time and money presents itself to do so. The majority of our dragons are now already in melamine enclosures. The leopard geckos are in clear sterilite containers and our hatchling dragons are in larger plastic storage containers.
 
I have glass tanks that came with animals so I kept them. Also my son got free tanks from one of his teachers. The nicer ones are set up as display cages.

Most of the snakes are in Natures Spirit Snake Shacks. I prefer these for my smaller snakes. Multiple animals in one unit, one plug, easy to clean, secure.

I put the bigger snakes in plastic cages. I have a couple of Boaphile 421Ds and a custom cage. These work out much better as far as space for the snake and being easy to clean.

The sterlites are puely temporary housing for smaller animals. Baby colubrids and Leopard geckos. When I get some more room in the tanks and racks they will be moved. Might just have to buy another rack though! It's nice living so close to a wonderful builder!
 
DIY melamine racks with Sterlite tubs. Just built a new rack that holds 33 sweater boxes and move most of my larger corns into it. My first DIY is being retired, total POS. My other one held 2 tubs per shelf unlike the new one, hence why I made the new one to save some space and it's only 4' tall not 6' like the new one. It's ok though since the old one holds 4 smaller Sterlites per shelf so it'll be used for yearlings. The 4' rack is a little short to properly fill out the space so I put a 40BR glass on top and will be putting my juvie Burm in it as soon as I get it cleaned out from it's last inhabitants. I'll try to post pics later, just took pics of the new rack last night when I was done constructing it. Only cost me about $130 for materials and it holds 33 snakes, not bad. Of course this price is without heat, thermostats or tubs. Tubs are costing me about $5.50 each.
 
Pic of new rack. Yes I do understand that with this rack half full and the other rack half full I am dangerously low on snakes, myself and Visa are working to rectify the problem. :hehe:
 

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I don't see Visa standing in your way to prevent something like that happening. :hehe:
 
I have a metal rack full of aquariums and rubbermaid boxes. The aquariums keep my adult and juvie adults, the rubbermaids are for the babies. My skink's 50g aquarium is just kinda on the floor right now until I can get a stand for it.
 
I build almost all of my racks. I currently have a 41 qt custom rack, 28 qt custom rack and a 12qt custom rack. The 41 qt holds my breeder female BP's, 28 qt holds my males and het's and the 12 qt holds my babies. I also have a custom enclosure in the living room i originally built for a Green Tree, that now houses a 5' male Jungle Carpet. Im building 2 new enclosures shortly. 1 for a 7' 4" male normal BCI, and another that will actually have 2 enclosures in it for a male hypo and a female normal BCI. I do have one Boaphile rack that is currently not in use.

If anyone needs to know how to keep your Boaphile racks heating properly just shoot me a PM. I use insulation sent with my rodent orders from Rodentpro.com. Shoot me a couple bucks for shipping and i can send a few out.
 
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