Here are some photos of my current setup that is constantly changing and I keep having multiple issues to work through as I'm sure does everyone else LOL.
I just moved my rodents out of all of these glass aquariums, it was a ton of work every single day. Just this week I moved them into a rodent rack, so much easier! The only problem now is the smell LOL. Especially the mice. I had them in aquariums with carbon filters on the top and that had no smell at all. Now that they are in the rack they smell bad. And they can't really reach the food or water so I have to put wooden blocks that get real dirty. It's the same with my African Soft Fur Rats. Not sure this rack is really designed for mice, although they are breeding and thriving. Also see the extra water bottles I put in there for the mice, the small mice didn't seem to be using the water nipples in the rack system.
One problem I was having was that I had my rodents on pine bedding from the feed store. I had a dead rat almost every day that I was pulling out of my glass tanks. When I moved over to this rack I switched to shredded paper and all the deaths stopped! I found out later that untreated pine chips, especially when really dusty like I was using, is lethal to rats.
To get cut down on the smell I use an air cleaner with a carbon filter, I'm thinking of actually enclosing the sides and back of the rodent rack keeping the front open and put the air filter on one side so all the air is filtered before it goes into the room. I'm going to try to build something out of cardboard first to see if it works and then maybe do a permanent enclosure with wood. To feed from the back I'll just pull the whole rack forward and out of the enclosure.
The other option is to just get rid of all my mice and ASF and stick with rats. I have enough pinkys to freeze and keep my smaller snakes happy for months. Maybe I'll just buy the mouse pinkys and use this setup for rats only, which is what it was designed for.
The rodent rack is an ARS rat breeder (partial stack) and the snake rack is an ARS-7030 on top and an ARS-8018 on the bottom. I'm using Reptichip in the snake rack changing it every 6 weeks or so, and using shredded paper from work for the rodents. I'm feeding the rodents Mazuri rodent blocks.
The rodent rack holds 75 pounds of feed (the feed smells too!) and 5 gallons of water. So they can really go all week long without having to feed or water, I just change out the bedding twice a week and check on them every day or two to make sure they are all alive and well!
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