Heck, wish I lived kind of close to AP haha. I bet driving there and back would still be less gas than $168 lol.
Words of wisdom if you do go AP. Go light on the Lexel. A little goes a long way with that stuff. My T10 cages, I used almost 2 tubes for 3 cages and the stuff stunk for a week and took as long to cure too. The T8s, I cut just the tip off the tube and squeezed out a very thing bead and then used a wet finger to smooth it out and push it in the crack. Only took about 3/4 of a single tube to do a 3 of the T8s and they have the same footprint as the T10s. And they don't stink and are just about cured after 1 day.
And yeah larger snakes definitely cost more but as weird as it sounds, I do love them and so it's worth it to get them set up to keep them happy. And that's not even factoring in food if you own a piggy snake haha. Caesar is in pretty deep shed as his eyes don't blue over, they just get really cloudy and dull. I tried to feed Dottie and she didn't want to eat for the 4th week lol so I figured Caesar ate in shed once and today should be his feeding day but I was going to skip it cause of shed. Well with the extra medium rat, I said why not and lifted Caesar's cool hide and hung the rat at the door. He was all gung ho for it lol. Like I said, hes in deep shed so again he kind of missed it but got the body. Took him like 10 mins to find the head as he was in full retard mode being in shed but he chowed it down, then wandered over to the warm side and curled up behind his warm hide. He is such a garbage can. Think I am going to try and alternate between a large rat and medium rat each week. He really isn't so food driven anymore as when he was a baby plus the rat place by my house, the sizes run on the small side. So a medium is like a small and a large is like a medium at the reptile shop that is an hour drive from my place.
Anyways back on the cage thing haha. Definitely get a shelf. It adds floor space so it turns the 48x24 into a 48x32. Adding perches will offer even more. And best of all the shelf is pretty cheap, its like $30 for it. Think its $40 for the T25s though but they are 8" deeps so plenty for a snake to curl up and relax.
Oh and one other thing. The shelves are easily removed from the cage so it makes cleaning them easy. Just have to tilt them and slide them out the door. Then can spray down the whole cage with F10SC and the shelf and let it soak and wipe it all down and then put the shelf back in.