building my own enclosure

[crystlew123]

Recently, I have been thinking about building my girl an enclosure so that I can build it the way i want it. I want it to be about 4 foot long by 1.5/2 foot tall and about the same width. I was planning on using Plexiglas. How hard do you think it would be to build this in a weekend? After that I would slowly add all the things I will require like a thermostat, rheostat, timer, heater, lamps, etc etc etc...and etc. Right now, she's fine in her ten gallon, but I'm bored with it and would like to experiment with my creative side. Would it be practical to try this or just a total waste of money? The basic inside decorating scheme would be do-able in just about any enclosure- given the right area exists.

[Raven01]

If you go acrylic (it is a little pricey but very nice to work with) Uarujoey on Youtube has some very easy to follow step by step videos on building with acrylic. He is pretty much a fish guy but, the same principles apply. You can just adapt his ideas to suit the needs of your herps.

Or you could see if you can get sheets of xPVC or ABS.

[tlich]

Since balls don't do well in clear enclosures (most people recommend blacking out 3 sides of a tank) why don't you use wood? This will take more than a weekend between sanding, staining or painting and finishing (clear coat), but is better insulated and will last forever.

I've built one for my ball python out of wood and now working on one for my boa they take me a few weeks but between work and sometimes lack of motivation I don't work on it and could probably be done much sooner.

For my boa cage I used these layouts:
http://www.mccarthyboas.com/EZ_Prints.html

I ordered this for the glass track for both cages:
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?p...5&site=ROCKLER

I'm using a radiant heat panel so the heat mat track isn't needed, and obviously you can do things differently, you could also use expanded PVC I've looked into this but it was really expensive around here.

Hope this helps!

[samthemanz3n]

I made lots made of black painted and coated melamine and sliding glass doors it looks sick with a purple or red light.