Has anyone used these valves?

[reptilegirl07]

Before I go and drop almost $300 on these valves, has anyone used these for mice and or rats?

Do they work just as good as the vari flow valves?

I will be using a pressure system and planned on buying the pressure regulator from them today and wanted to add valves to the order but I need valves that use the flex tubing and can do mice. These are what they had on their website.

I want to make sure they work, and work well with the system I'm hooking up before I order.



http://www.reptilebasics.com/rodent/...rinking-valve/


ALSO, I found a website to buy the vari-flow valves from for mice. Will I have any problems hooking up all my rodents (mice using vari-flow valves, and rats using edstrom original valves) to the same pressure regulator?

[bishop40k]

Very curious about those valves as well, as I have a couple racks in the work that need plumbing and saving $1-1.50 per valve adds up very quickly.

[Xbloodrain67X]

I actually use these for all of my rodent racks. Recently bought them about 3 weeks ago and they work perfect. If you are using 1/2in mesh make sure you have the metal piece to hold It up because they can slip thru the mesh or how I do it is his put it at an angle so they cant pull it in and they work perfect. It won't come silver though, I called them once I received them and they said they only have gold ones.

I'd go with them

[youbeyouibei]

I have some of those valves on order at the moment and just prior to Thanksgiving I heard from Rich at Reptile Basics that he was having trouble with the supplier being late on shipping them. Last I heard (Tuesday before Thanksgiving) was that he should have them in and be shipping them out on Monday, November 28th, barring any issues. I have yet to get them to use them but have a rack built that they'll be installed on. Anyway, thought I'd let you know about the delay if you need them in a hurry.

[Robyn@SYR]

They have an ingenious non-flood design. Well worth the investment, awesome valves, nothing else like them on the market.

[jasbus]

Spring and stem valves have been on the market for 30 years... Just very expensive. All lab style valves are made this way. I used to use them years ago.

As for the RBI ones, they are very good, and cheap!...

[reptilegirl07]

Thanks guys! I looked on his site a week or so back and they were gone?

I'm guessing its due to the slow shipping from supplier.

If the valve can slide right through the wire mesh and needs those clips, It winds up being about $2.75 per valve/clip combo.

But, if I go with the vari flow and buy 100 valves, it winds up being $2.95

Over 100 valves I save 20.00 going with the reptile basics valves, but, which is better, vari flow, or reptile basics?

For such a small difference in price, I think I'd feel more comfortable going with a known product.

If I can get away without the clip I would save about $60.00 over 100 of the reptile basics valves.

Decisions, decisions.

I just NEED it to work with mice. The original edstrom valves I'm using now with the mice work for about 3/4 of my mice, but there are about 3 tubs that have trouble using the valves for some reason.

[jasbus]

Well, I've got both, but I don't use the RBI design for my mice for one reason. My home-made mouse rack tubs drop down a little too late when you pull them out, and sometimes the rub the valve... The Vari-Flo's have half of the nipple covered, and I just feel better with that design for my mouse racks... I do have the RBI ones on a mouse rack that was pre-constructed, and the tubs drop earlier, so I don't worry about them on that one rack. they work really well. I have probably 30-50 of them on rat racks and guinea pig cages, as well as probably 200 vari-flo valves. I can't tell a difference in quality really..

[Reptilebasics]

Ok, the valve story!

Thanks for giving me the heads up on this thread Robyn-

Yet another of my brain children (?) I have been tinkering with for awhile. Seems easy right? No.
I finally found a machine shop willing to make the body/ stem at a price that was liveable so I went with several samples/prototypes of a hybridized design I have had in my head for awhile.
Well of course they worked great. So we make 20K of them. We then find out the differences between samples and mass production. I actually knew something would go haywire just not what. Anyone thinks all of this is easy I got news for you!

What we learned is that they flowed a little too much too fast and some would still leak. Issue(s) were springs that on "average" were the correct tension but average is not all of them. Some were weaker than others. Easy enough, we need new stiffer springs. Spent a few more days finding out how much was too much. Next we also found out I need to do the assembly of the finished valve here in house, not elsewhere, because not everyone is as meticulous about cleaning thousands of little brass parts as they should be. Some have little tiny brass particles on the o-rings. I am finding out that is a real pain in the rear 'cause sharp little pieces of brass seek out soft rubber o-rings like flies to .........

I took them off the site for several days to get ahead of these issues. Not catastrophic but I needed to get out in front of it and when they are going out the door quicker than I can fix these things it is a problem.
Right now they are back up and we are limping along keeping up with them waiting on the mother lode of new springs (we went to a slightly longer/stiffer spring) that on "average" lands in the correct window of flow no matter what. We have developed a neat new way of cleaning all the parts that gets rid of about everything that does not belong there and make them really shiny to boot. Turned into a 3 step procedure but it is what it is and it is finally working the way I want it too.

So if anyone has some "early" ones of these that are giving them trouble just let me know and we will swap them out. Don't drive your self crazy with them. Most were fine but seems like when you hit a bad patch of them you hit it good. It has become pretty clear that once we get these early production bugs out we should have a really nice alternative valve for you!

Wait till you see what I have up my sleeve next..............

[Reptilebasics]

And I FINALLY got around to setting up a Facebook page - mostly due to Robyn's encouragement

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Reptil...466437?sk=wall