Dirty Enclosure w/babies

[anatess]

I have mine in 10 gallon tanks. I have 3 groups - one for the breeders, one for the weaned females, one for the weaned males. So, I have 4 10 gallon tanks - I have an extra 10 gallon that I would prepare, then move the rats there, moving the adults first then the babies. I then clean the 10 gallon that they just vacated and prep it for the next set of rats and so on leaving one empty tank after I'm all done.

I'm getting pretty fast with the clean-up. By the way, the first thing I do before dumping substrate is take out all of the hides, tubes, water bottles, food hoppers, wheels, etc. for all 3 tanks and rinse them off with dishwasher soap and very hot water in a big tub. Using hot water to rinse makes them dry much faster. Then I fill out the water bottles and the food hoppers. So then when I set-up the fresh tank, I just towel dry the stuff and put it in the fresh tank then put the rats in. I usually get this all done well under an hour but, I've been known to spend A LOT of time just watching the rats run around in the fresh tank trying to "re-arrange" everything, digging the substrate, moving babies, etc., that I sometimes find myself wasting an entire Saturday morning...