Many people that have made the racks for lids regret doing that. It's so much easier to not have lids, you just pull the tub out a little and their you go. If you have lids on you have to take the tub entirely out of the rack, open it, do whatever, put the lid back on, and finally put the tub back. The only thing is that you need to make the shelves close enough to go without lids. If you are worried about the snakes pushing the tubs open without lids you can always put bars/pegs/etc in front of the tubs so they won't move.