For those of you who use plastic cages...

[Drizzt80]

I really don't want to step on anyone's toes here, but wow, I just can't justify spending that kind of money on the prefab cages and racks. I think they are way overpriced! I prefer my extra cash to go to more snakes or other urgent supplies.

I need two more racks, and am planning a hatchling rack as well for this summer. I'm going to make two racks exactly like the two in the picture below. I'm going to build a hatchling rack that will hold 40 Sterilite Fliptops which are 6 1/2" x 7" square.

INCLUDING ALL THE STERILITE TUBS, melamine, pegboard, screws, flexwatt, dimmer switches, and indcidentals FOR ALL 3 RACKS, I only need to budget $360.

For their 7 high rack, I would need $250 PLUS the additional expense of the sterilite, roughly $35, AND shipping.

My racks each hold 6 32 Qt. or 12- 15Qt. sterilite tubs. My cost above of $360 INCLUDES 15- 32 Qt, and 28- 15 Qt. tubs.

Not doing an advertisement here, cause I don't want to build them and ship them, but seriously, if you can't build them yourself, add in a 12 pack to the cost and talk to a good friend!!

D80

 

[Celestine8]

I wish I could turn the picture to the right and see what those cages look like on the left. See, my dilemma is that I love snakes and would like to casually breed some types, but I don't plan on having over 40 and would like to build a caging unit of some sort that could hold a fair amount of reptiles, but be very attractive, spacious and cheapesque. My fiancee drew me a picture of what it would look like but I need to know if this is possible or has been done.

 

[treppilj]

I am new to this whole snake thing and I went to the AP web site and liked what I saw. I have been wanting to do a rack, and I think this fills the bill. I wasn't wild about the color choices for the racks, cause you know our snake racks must match our furniture. To keep everyone happy... Just kidding, my wife is very supportive of my hobby. Anyhoo they appeared very compact and not bad looking. I know I could build one from wood and it would look more pleasing to the eye but my fear is the heat source. I was reading either this thread or another and there was a link to the heat tape site and that looked complicated. My wife accepts the snake thing but if I burned down our house, that might be the end to my snake hobby. :awcrap:

So I have asked for one of the AP snake racks for Fathers Day..

 

[Drizzt80]

Celestine, even though you hate Drizzt Do'Urden . . . I think I can rotate that picture for you.

This is the first cage I built before I knew I would become bitten with the cornsnake bug. At the time I only had two corns, and by the time I had it built (2 weeks to procur the money and supplies, 1 day to build it.), my collection grew to about 12 . . . it only got worse from there!

Anyway. It is completely homemade, except that I had the glass cut locally. Total cost was around $150 including glass and UTH's. I am going to attach a second post showing how I tackled the heating issue.

The cage is made completely out of melamine shelving, metal sheeting tops, and bathroom paneling for the back. It's been in use for almost 3 years now, and is holding up just fine. The only change I would make to my design in the future is to add a 1" dam under the glass doors to keep chips from the door tracks. Also, recently I have decided that I could probably make the cages themselves shorter in height and add a fourth cage and not gain too much in height.

Overall, each individual cage is 36" long, 14 3/4" front to back (15" shelving boards), and either 12 or 14 inches tall. The total cage is about 4 feet tall.

Here it is:

 

[Drizzt80]

I went through umpteen designs, and another 20+ ideas for heat and came up with this relatively simple method. I routered a hole in the floor of each cage, with a lip, and placed a pane of glass in the hole. Some silicone, attach the UTH, and voila, heat.

 

[Drizzt80]

Oh yeah, last little tidbit. When you get the glass cut (glass accounted for about $50 of the total cost) be sure to ask for unfinished edges! It cut the cost of glass in half! I just used some white duct tape to 'finish' them off myself.

D80

PS. Again, add in the cost of the six pack for the buddy who had the quality table saws and other equipment, and I could build two of these to the cost of one of AP's single cages!

 

[magick-bears]

Boaphile Plastics

I am really suprised that no one has mentioned Boaphile Plastics yet. These are produced by noted Boa breeder Jeff Ronne. Not only are these cages and racks extreemly functional they are also austiticly pleasing and Affordable. My personal favorite is the one that holds 15 First Phillips Polycarbonate Sweater Boxes. These are clear so I can see my snakes has handles for easy access and is heated for $479 including shipping. They also do more economical Rubbermaid racks as well as terestrial cages. If you like the AP T10 they have a 48"L x 24"D x 11.5"H for $199 shipped.

Just my $0.03
Jeff

 

[Skye]

Jeff,

I agree that Boaphile makes great racks, and although I don't own any, I hear nothing but good things about them.

Drizzt,

I completely agree with you - building cages is cheaper, rewarding, and you can get exactly what you want without too much effort. However, I like plastic, and I just don't have the equipment or skills to work with plastic.

Below is a picture of two cages we have built. The one on the left is for our veiled chameleon. We varnished the wood and left it outside for 6 weeks to cease smelling before we started to use it. The front, the roof and the sides are wire screen. It is 5 ft. tall. The cage on the right is the first dragon cage we built. It is 5 ft. long. The corner posts are so long as we may eventually make it a double-decker one day.

The chameleon cage works great, although I wish we had done it 6ft tall. The dragon cage is bare wood and thus tricky to sterilize. Also, crickets can climb wood, so insect containment at feeding time is not the easiest. Our latest building venture was a double-decker 8 ft long pair of uromastyx cages which works great, but weights a ton - again out of wood.

Now I have less time and more money since I got a full-time job again, I'm going for the easy option of buying cages. I don't like racks, and I can't make plastic cages myself, hence I don't see another option, even if I did have the time. Also, I'm getting past lifting all these wooden cages around, and I can move the plastic ones easily.

Your set-ups look great though, and congratulations to you for building your own.

Skye

 

[Drizzt80]

Skye, thanks for the comments. I have to agree that my cages are heavy, and I tend to need another pair of hands when I want to move them, but I can handle having my son help me move things when I can save so much money!

Your cages look really nice as well! I agree that wood is difficult, and even though it would save me even more compared to melamine, I don't think I'll every use it.

What I need to do is win the lottery (or find a school district that pays it's teachers what they're worth), and then I'd probably outfit everything I have in plastic cages!

D80

 

[Celestine8]

Thanks so much for that rotate, Drizzt!!! By the way, I only hated him in the Seige of Darkness trilogy thing I just picked up the next one in line and have decided that he's not all that bad in this one, but Jarlaxle's still better. Yeah, about the glass cutting, my mom does stained glass and could prolly cut me some glass so, saving more cash.

 

[Chip]

magic bears

I mentioned them in my post with great praises.

The downside for me is price and the fact that the tubs fit so tightly that the water sloshes out on the gentlest of closings...

 

[magick-bears]

Re: magic bears

I mentioned them in my post with great praises.

The downside for me is price and the fact that the tubs fit so tightly that the water sloshes out on the gentlest of closings...

Sorry Chip,

It was very late when I had read this thread. I must have missed it in your post.

Personaly I love the lidless systems and they need to fit snugly for that otherwise you end up with loose snakes. Though it does sound like yours are a tad to sunug.

Jeff