Great Stuff Foam on Vision Cage?

[jspuds]

I have a plywood cage now, and I have a cement-covered styrofoam background, but this doesn't work as well as I would like.

For my next enclosure for my BP, I'd really like to go with something I can just take out back and hose down completely for easier cleaning = plastic.

This means a vision high-density polyethylene enclosure or getting sheets of HDPE and building myself.

Ideally, I'd use Great Stuff foam directly on the plastic and cover that to make a nice background I can hose down, but I don't know if this stuff will stick to the plastic? Has anyone tried it, and does it work?

Thanks,
Jim

[PythonWallace]

I never tried it on plastic, but Graet Stuff is some of the most adhesive crap I've ever seen. I got some of it on my fingers a month ago and it took 3 days to get it off, and I still have some on my nails.

[RyanGSP]

I helped build a bunch of cages for my buddy when he opened his shop. We took foam (both insulation and spray) and sprayed it on the back forming the kind of shapes and features we wanted.

Once that was done and hard we took a knife and sculped out what we wanted for a "cleaner" look. Once that was done and we were happy with the look we took concrete and mixed it with course sand which was then smeared onto the foam. This gave us a great finished look when we were done. We got a little fancy and made some places for live plants to grow, some caves, and one even had a waterfall. They were heavy because they were built out of 3/" MDF but for a display tank size it wouldnt be too bad.

If you wanted to make it removable just put the styrofoam in and dont glue it to the back. If you are using spray foam put a layer of thin plastic between the wall and the foam this will allow you to peel it off later and the foam wont stick to the wall. I would reccomend you think of some sort of support for the bottom some "L" barackets on the bottom would work or you could think of some outcropping on the bottom to hold it up. Some ideas I used was an Arch, a tree branch stuck into the foam, I made a corner cave in each corner then built up the sides. One side was a pool of water with a waterfall flowing into it to keep watermovement, and the other had plants in it.

Now if you didnt want to use concrete I would suggest using spray foam and then painting it with spray paint to give it that more natural look.

[jspuds]

Cool, so you guys are saying it should work. Sounds good I just wanted to make sure. Permanence is also just fine, as these tanks are going to be built for the specific animals (Frank my BP right now, hopefully a bearded dragon once I move and have more room too)

The ply tank is actually holding up great, and the styrofoam/mortar inserts i made look pretty decent, but I think cement will look more natural and actually having it permanently affixed to a washable tank (ie, not wood) would make life a bunch easier in a lot of ways. This also allows me to correct a few minor things I would like to do differently (have the ceiling for maintenance, for example)

Thanks!

Jim

Also, does anyone know of a good place to get sheets of plastic, whether HDPE or something else? I don't want to buy that much plexiglass, it's too expensive and I don't want the entire thing to be see-through.

Forgot - I have a german shorthair too. Great dogs.

[RichardA]

That stuff sticks to just about anything.....LOL

Be sure to get pics of your project to share with us!

[jspuds]

Will do, going to be 3-6 months until i move though, just planning ahead