Rat litters

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Originally Posted by anatess

This is easily remedied with a drain system. I drain/clean/refill the watering system once a month, sometimes I get lazy and I go for 2.

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For my own personal use, how did you put in a draining system if you don't mind me asking?

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Originally Posted by grcforce327

I have one! Try posting in the appropriate forum

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Posting in the wrong forum happens it's a mistake no need to belittle our members about it.:colbert:

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Originally Posted by hypnotixdmp

For my own personal use, how did you put in a draining system if you don't mind me asking?

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My rack is in a screened-in patio attached to my house. So, all I did was drill 2 holes in side of the tub, and glued a deflector piece of plastic so the water doesn't drip to the bottom tubs and covered it up with screen so the bedding doesn't get stuck in it. The water would drip out onto the patio floor.

I have a watering system on my racks (two 6-bin racks), and love it. I have had a few rats who liked playing with the lickers and did flood their tubs, but not enough to kill any one (including on female who flooded her 2 week old litter!). (I had to cull those females. I hated doing it though. :( ) Other than that, I check everything at least once daily to make sure it is functioning properly. Even so, a single malfunction can result in disaster. I haven't yet modified my racks yet, but I have heard of a couple people who drill holes in the tubs and insert the lickers that way, instead of putting the lickers in through the top. This serves multiple purposes: smaller babies can reach the lickers, should a malfunction occur it will only flood up to the licker (maybe an inch, depending on where on the side of the tub you put the licker) and not the whole tub. A rat can survive in water for a period of time (I don't know the limit, but I know there's something about rats being able to tread water for days before dying, dont' know if that's accurate or not), as long as they can keep their heads above water to breath. If you are checking tubs daily, you'll be able to rescue any rats if such a malfunction occurs, especially if there's only an inch of water.

I agree with the watering system being the way to go. that said, if your going to stay with the 32oz bottles, buy them from walmart 3.50 in VA. I use them and their great, just as good as my $8 one from petsmart. Just a thought for you to consider.

Watering system is the way to go. Reptile basics sells everything you will need. The new designed lickers don't leak much at all. I've never had a problem and if you did they sell a rebuild kit for 10 licker valves for about $3. My racks are 6 tubs high and cost about $50 to set each one up. Takes about 10 minutes to put together :)

I use a water system for my racks and love it. I used to do water bottles, but it just takes too long and if one happened to run out, the rats would pull and knock the bottle down enough that they could chew a hole into it.

The two easy ways to avoid floods are to use a 5 gallon bucket rather than hooking it up to a continuous water source. That way only the contents of the bucket will flood the bin, which isn't enough to drown anything older than 3 weeks or so. The other tip is to be sure the nozzles are affixed tightly to the screen so they can't pull the nozzle into the bin and chew the tubing.

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