I do not think your cage is going to hold up well the way you are constructing it. That said I would like to congratulate you on working on a cage as not a lot of people actually do go that far.

that said here is some advice that is meant to be constructive and help you as I have built many cages some indoors some outdoors some that have worked and some that haven't. I have learned from all of them. Judging from your photos I can tell that you do not seem to be very experienced with carpentry. There is no shame in that many people are not and when I built my first cage I had limited carpentry experience. I had worked setting house trailer and had done groundskeeping for one of the major amusement parks in NYS at the time so I had a bit of knowledge but not much.

Yo give you some insight I cut a hole in the plywood bottom of my first monitor cage to accommodate a kiddie pool and used a skil saw to do it (Quite difficult and not very bright although I did pull it off.) We have all been there at some point of not really knowing how to do things like this.

That said,if I were building a cage in what appears to be a garage with a concrete floor as it looks in your photos, considering that you are considering putting 2 and a half feet of dirt in it I would utilize a base of 8x8x16 in. concrete blocks I would top that with a layer of 4x8x16 in. solid blocks I would dry stack them and then coat them with a surface bonding cement product like quick wall since I am a much better carpenter than a mason. Personally I would fill the hollow cores of the blocks with sand or a sand/portland cement mixture to make it a bit more stable (it does so with either..(portland cement/sand is obviously more stable) as for setting the first course of blocks on a layer of mortar as I said I am a better carpenter than mason and since you aren't build a house or outbuilding why worry? It isn't going anywhere. this is a much cheaper option than plywood and definitely much more sturdy..

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