Going back to Tegus...Need new ideas

[JoshSloane]

Thats awesome. Im sure your kid loves it. I love the natural look too, and will be upgrading a lot of my enclosures as I get a more long term housing situation. Somehow I am lucky enough that my girlfriend/soon-to-be-fiance says that I can have ANY reptile I want as long as the enclosure is "pretty."

[jclaiborne]

Thats awesome. Im sure your kid loves it. I love the natural look too, and will be upgrading a lot of my enclosures as I get a more long term housing situation. Somehow I am lucky enough that my girlfriend/soon-to-be-fiance says that I can have ANY reptile I want as long as the enclosure is "pretty."

Yes my kid loves it, he is going to be 7 in August, so he is at that fearless stage when he wants to touch everything from a full grown retic to the largest monitor he sees at shows, so I am working on teaching him caution and making him realize not all these animals will be nice 100 percent of the time. Without sounding like the worst parent in the world I am almost hoping sooner rather than later he gets tagged by our male Childrens Python because he is small enough to not do any damage, but might teach him a little caution.

Make sure you get what she said in writing, signed and notarized!!!! My wife said and I quote "when you get the reptile room done and all the cages built and organized, as long as it looks nice you can do/add anything you want down there..." Fast forward 1 year because I have been waiting for a certain breeder to hatch his clutch of Childrens Pythons, I told her they finally hatched and we should be getting our female sometime this summer, she freaks out and says "I told you no more reptiles." Which means that once I get the lil worm in a few month I will have to ask for forgiveness lol.

[JoshSloane]

Haha yeah maybe I should get a notarized contract.

So after pricing troughs and supplies to build a top for it, I think its actually going to be cheaper to just build a wooden enclosure, seal with drylok, and install light fixtures inside the enclosure in more of a standard setup.

[jclaiborne]

Haha yeah maybe I should get a notarized contract.

So after pricing troughs and supplies to build a top for it, I think its actually going to be cheaper to just build a wooden enclosure, seal with drylok, and install light fixtures inside the enclosure in more of a standard setup.

Probably true. I have noticed most of my cages I build save at least half the money it would cost to buy off the shelf ones.

[JoshSloane]

Yep. Ok so here is my sticking point. Where do you find/what kind of track do you use for the glass doors? With the boa cages in the past that I built, I used a hinged door with framed acrylic, but would much rather have sliding glass for all my builds moving forward. Any advice?

[jclaiborne]

Yep. Ok so here is my sticking point. Where do you find/what kind of track do you use for the glass doors? With the boa cages in the past that I built, I used a hinged door with framed acrylic, but would much rather have sliding glass for all my builds moving forward. Any advice?

Well it really depends on what materials you are using. If you are going with wood then I would search around for some 1/4in tracks that you can screw into the wood: http://www.mcmaster.com/#door-tracks/=xrlmtw

If you are going to do glass I recommend going the tempered glass route. That was pushed on the monitor forum quite a bit.

Just one word of advice to think about. I have sliders on all my smaller cages, they work great for the all of my other lizards, but when I had the Tegu in the smaller cage she was constantly shoveling dirt into the tracks making it impossible to slide open and closed, mind you this cage had a 6 inch barrier before you could even get up to the tracks, they weren't ground level, which is why on her big cage I went the hinged route. I would much rather have sliders but she already proved it would be a pain to constantly vacuum out.

[JoshSloane]

Ah I see. I was thinking about that too. Im actually concurrently building a boa cage for one of my adults, and was more thinking the sliding glass for that build. I really would rather have sliding glass for all enclosures, but I definitely see the issue you bring up.

[JoshSloane]

After some youtube 'research' it seems that people easily make their own sliding glass tracks using these C channels from home depot, and cut their own glass.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded...3?N=5yc1vZc2gt

[jclaiborne]

yup that basically looks like the same thing I linked to you, except it was two tracks vs. one. Either way when you get the glass cut make sure you leave a little wiggle room in order to be able to pull the glass in and out of the track, it may be a good idea to add some plastic "sliders" to the top and bottom of the glass where it contacts the channel.

[JoshSloane]

Great idea..Not sure if you covered this in a previous post, but what did you use to seal the interior of the enclosure? I know that many people use silicone to seal edges, then paint, and then put a water based polyurethane top coat over that. Two things I don't like about this are having to work with polyurethane (headaches), and having to wait 3 weeks for the fumes to dissipate. I looked into fiberglass resin and drylok, but not sure how that would turn out with paint beneath. Im also going to post this in the 'DIY' section for others to see.