i've been scheming for a while to make a habitat out of some screen material...like the stuff in your screen door. i figure i could build a huge habitat that is still easy to view from the font for a fraction of the cost of buying a aquarium, and i would still be able to see my herps just as well! I think this kind of setup would also improve ventilation, it would be really easy to mount lights and things like that wherever you want (cuz you could just build it right into your frame or whatever). not sure if this has ever been tried for private use, not sure why not. I got the idea from my work, we have a diamondback rattlesnake, so as a safety precaution we have him in a room that is completely sealed with that mesh over every opening so that if he ever got out of his tank he would still be trapped in the room.
reptile/amphibian habitat
- Thread starter curtisdonohue
- Start date
I did something like this when I was a kid and it was one of the coolest setups I had at the time. Using a 65gallon setup, I built a wood frame out of 1x2's with a door in the front for access. This frame sat on the top lip and went up to the ceiling. Then using quarter in hardware cloth, i screened it all in and then shrink wrapped the whole thing with that stuff for weatherproofing windows so I could control humidity and temp.
The result was some happy baby nile monitors. I kept about a foot of water in the tank with feeders in it and then a big tree going all the way to the ceiling. They loved the 360 climbing the inside of the screen and the tree afforded them.
The only problem, if you could call it one, was that they were so happy and active, that they went from their infant 8in size to over two feet in less than a half a year. Then I just made a room sized enclosure using the same 1x2's and hardware cloth and shrinkwrap method. For the base I made an elevated platform of plywood covered in linolium that i could counter sink a nice tub into.
This worked well until they bulked up when they were over a year old. The problem was they lost their aborial nimbleness and they would sometimes fall as they climbed on the screen. At that point, rescreening with half inch hardware cloth and putting in a bottom layer of plexiglass to keep them from climbing helped
The result was some happy baby nile monitors. I kept about a foot of water in the tank with feeders in it and then a big tree going all the way to the ceiling. They loved the 360 climbing the inside of the screen and the tree afforded them.
The only problem, if you could call it one, was that they were so happy and active, that they went from their infant 8in size to over two feet in less than a half a year. Then I just made a room sized enclosure using the same 1x2's and hardware cloth and shrinkwrap method. For the base I made an elevated platform of plywood covered in linolium that i could counter sink a nice tub into.
This worked well until they bulked up when they were over a year old. The problem was they lost their aborial nimbleness and they would sometimes fall as they climbed on the screen. At that point, rescreening with half inch hardware cloth and putting in a bottom layer of plexiglass to keep them from climbing helped