I have a homemade rack and it works great! My boyfriend built it to look like a cabinet to blend in with my current furniture.
I recommend going with IRIS brand tubs. IRIS never changes their tub styles. Ever. So it makes it easy to replace tubs in the future. Rubbermaid and Sterilite tend to change their tub designs often so unless you buy a bunch of spare tubs now, getting replacements in the future will be difficult.
If possible, it would be a good idea to consider building your rack out of PVC material. It's lighter than Melamine, but strong and will last. And since it's plastic, it's already water resistant. (Great for humidity) Simple Man did a nice PVC rack tutorial here in the DIY section.
I also like to use a CD as a spacer guide between the tubs and rack shelf when building a rack.
And here is my tub to weight ratio list for you to use as a guide.
Tub sizes:
6 qt - for hatchlings
16 qt - 500 or less grams
28/32 qt - 2000 or less grams
41 qt - 2000 + gram adults
Depending on how warm and stable your room temperature is, belly heat is usually safer.
I used back heat for some time. And it worked great. It kept a nice temperature gradient and had my temps perfect. But my room never ran above 70-75. Since back heat affects ambient temp and air temp, the flexwatt ran at 115-120 degrees just to maintain the perfect temps. I was uncomfortable with the high temperature it was putting out, so I changed to belly heat. Flexwatt shouldn't run above 100. It starts becoming potentially dangerous after that point. With belly heat and the same exact room temperature, my flexwatt now runs in the high 90s to maintain the same exact tub temps.
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