Posted by:
3y3c3
at Mon Jun 23 06:46:47 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by 3y3c3 ]
I appreciate everyones assistance and input on this, diversity of knowledge is the spice of custome keeping, and that's where I wish to be! It might be the end of the year before the first cage is built, and then all next year I will be building 7 more for the final collection.
It is going to be a lot of work, but it's the kind of work I live for! Woodworking, leatherworking, snake keeping, gardening, indoor gardening, and custom caging are all very keen subjects to me, and with my 5 years of shop including the advanced cabinetry classes I took in high school where we were actually assigned to companies to install large scale projects, I feel I have a good bead on this creation.
I like the methods recommended for water sealing, but again, I'm probably ust going to have to build it in panels for ease of transport. That means, penny for penny, it'd be quicker and easily maintained if I just put thin sheets of acrylic layered over the wood, and glued & screwed to it. A bit pricy sure, but all of the methods I'm looking at now are pricy in some way, labor wise or materials.
Floor space wont be a problem because the vastness of it will be a large grassy patch, with exotic easy to keep grasses to contrast the snakes natural colors, real light, kentucky bluegrass for the dark phase snakes, and real dark, foresty green carpets of grass for the albinos. Probably 5 feet by 4 feet of just flat open space with grass in the center of the cage. Then a shallow (10 inch deep) reservoir with casters. All the mechanics for the water basin will be sectioned off into a compartment that eats up about 10% of the reservoir, but burms just cannot leave well enough alone, and that 10% saves the risk of all manners of headaches from arising! It will be oxygenated via micro-diffusion air stones, because tinier bubbles are more readily absorbed by the water, and when more air is in the water bodies can use it more efficiently. The pH thing was recommended to me for me by an apothecary hippie I met in Idaho who has her own organic herbal shop. She knew her hippie stuff and dazzled me with information I'll not be able to recall, but she got her point across!
As for the other end of the cage where the hidey holes live, I like to stack hidey hole on one another because to a snake, it makes a world of difference somehow. My burm has a blanket in his tank because everytime I hang out with him, and he wanders around my freshly cleaned room, he always winds up on my bed burrowin around the blankets like its his. He will spend hours going from one layer of blanket to the next like it was unexplored territory. Very amusing, great excersize for the snake too. I really liked that shelf idea, and since I dont mind the crawl in and maintain kind of cage, I think it would maximize floor space adding that much more for the snake to fool around with, and my burms are nothing if they arent curious 24/7!
I will happily post some pics once I have a few worth posting, but I just moved up here to washington, and gotta get the grind of a new state set in before I take on my hobbies again. Got me a dragon (chinese zodiac for my girlfriend) who's expecting college next fall, so I figured we'll buy her a year of tuition, then my snakes n tools n motorcycle (which are all still cheaper that one year of her tuition! lol @ college kids) and then her another year of school, then my next big present package! Maybe i'll get crazy and get me that tarantula collection I've been wanting for years!
Thanks for the input guys! I love having a forum full of snake nerds to talk too about these thoughts in my head. No one understands me, I have no reptile friends, and when I tell people I know I keep pythons they recoil in fear like I told them I was infected with ebola, and hiss the age old question "are they poisonous!?" at me. I was walking around Boise with my standard phase male on my shoulders, going to my work to pick up my paycheck, and a lady parked next to me, was on her cell phone, and when she turned off her jeep and got out and saw my 8 foot python chillin on my shoulders like it was no big deal, she shrieked, said "I f****** hate snakes!" jumped in her jeep and literally sped away as though my ferocious killer that was just seething with evil on my shoulders was going to chase her in her jeep! I'm tellin' ya, Salt Lake City, Boise, and Olympia are NOT the most snake friendly capitals in the world!
Blessed Be
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Thanks you guys! - 3y3c3, Mon Jun 23 06:46:47 2008