Update on my sulcata

[Alessandro Previero]

Kiwi is just shy of 3 months old, measures about 2.9/3 inch in length.
In the past months I had built myself a PVC- based closed enclosure which worked well at keeping temp and humidity but was not ideal to open / clean etc.
Two days ago we decided to change to a proper terrarium, in this case one by Zoo Med with the two-front doors setup, because the home made one was simply to unstable (building yourself one is difficult and quite expensive).

For this new terrarium, I had to tape quite precisely aluminum foil on the top because off-the-shelf it has an open aluminum grid, which makes it easy to hang lamps but is detrimental to humidity.
I also taped the air ducts in the front to minimize leakage.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the new housing, it is sturdy, you can see well and it’s easy to clean and handle. I have 3 lamps following (@Tom Sulcata posts) - a HO UV fluorescent tube (good UV reading), a CHE connected to a thermostat for 80F and a basking spot for the daytime.

So far temperature and humidity leakage doesn’t seem an issue, but I can eventually introduce a humidifier tube through the wires opening on the top to keep it under control.

For reference, the terrarium cost was 280$ and lamps + thermostat altogether around 100$.

For comparison, at Home Depot, one 2ft by 4ft board of PVC (1/2’’ thick) is roughly 60$, and you’ll need 3 or 4 of them, just for the structure.
I say this because I’ve been through it myself and I’d like to save other people a few bucks, especially if they don’t have tools/skills to build it well.

 

[Tom]

Great post with lots of insight. You are demonstrating what I sometimes say: Everyone will eventually learn everything that I know if they do what I've done. And here you are.

I also figured it would be cheaper to build my own and it would also allow me to customize things to my liking, but like you, I discovered that just the materials cost more than what I can buy a finished cage for. The people who make the cages buy all the materials in bulk at a huge discount. By the time you pay for their labor and they add a little on to make some money for their efforts, it ends up costing about the same as if I went out and bough the raw materials myself at regular retail prices. This doesn't even count the 20-30 hours it takes to build it and the frustration of not knowing how to do it and not having the tools or work space to do it right.

After many attempts to build my own, calculating the costs, failures and successes, hours of frustration during the builds, many hundreds of dollars in tool investments, I decided years ago that buying indoor enclosures was a far superior way to go. I still build my outdoor night boxes because there is nothing like that available for sale, but I'd rather buy those too. Just finishing a new one right now.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm certain this will help other people make informed decisions.