Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone used a tiled floor and sides for a large burrowing monitor's enclosure? It should keep the dirt and moisture from getting to the wood under it shouldn't it?

Works excellent if don right, some of my cages have ceramic floor and walls. However for coast issues I prefer lining the walls with plastic sheets, the are $12 per 4-8ft sheets @ home depot, I tough I would need to replace them every few years, but some are 5 year old and show no sing of where, my monitors have not clawed thru them yet.

Of course ceramic is everlasting, but expensive!

What kind of plastic sheets are you using?

Hey BAZ,
I wouldn't bother with tile. It's not necassary. Just cover your floor with FRP or formica, or like Jobi said, the corragated plastic that they use for signs. You can get all three at home depot. I just slab on Bulldog grip to adhere them, then silicon corners. Works great. Is this for the Blackthroat? If so I would go with FRP or Formica, as it's stronger than the plastic, though I'm sure the plastic would work well. I've been using the plastic as well for the last few years for some cages. It's cheaper and easy to work with. But for a floor I like to go with the others. Plus, a blackthroat...
Here's a pic of my boy.

the black plastic that is at Home Depot for lining Koi ponds is pretty durable if you're going that route. Look in garden center. It's sold on a roll by the yard or foot.

Thanks Mike. Awesome looking monitor!

Hmmmmm... I wonder how rhino liner for truck beds would work...

This I know about. Regular grout is water-permeable to some degree, except for epoxy grout. The easy way would be to use silicone resin caulk for the grouting. The tile surface will then be waterproof, and the silicone will stick amazingly strongly to the tile. Much stronger than grout. Do a test joint and let it cure for a day and a half, and try to twist the two pieces apart. An example of another use of silicone resin with tiles is the tiles in acrylic whirlpool spas. They glue the tile to the spa wall with silicone, and grout with white silicone.

Denatured alcohol is a good cleanup solvent for silicone.

Roger

You can know something, like you just explained, but what you should know is this. To keep it real, you should be in context. Be smart about the subject, not smart about the wrong subject.

Using tile is fairly dumb, if a person is being honest. ITs dumb because its going to be ruined if its used for any length of time, Mold, fungus, etc etc. And its bloody expensive and takes a ton of work. If done well tile is beautiful(cover it?????)So its unfit for a bottom of a cage.

On the otherhand, an old friend(40years ago) routinely used vinyl sheet flooring of off and unpopular colors. Man they would sale him that stuff for nearly free. It surely was ugly, but it worked.

There are a bunch of suitable methods, plain old concrete(even as a subfloor to be torn out later) FRP, FRC, pond liner, Galvanized metal(trough like hey), vinyl flooring and more.

The problem with answering any of these types of questions is this, each case has its own particularities. Which makes it only solved by the person doing it. Access, tools, situation, availability, and more are determining factors.

All in all, If I wanted to waste money, I would buy UV bulbs instead of tile, naw, I would play the lottery. At least there is a chance of something good happening. Cheers

This was free linoleum flooring i used in an Argus enclosure. The monitor picks at the edges, but it's working for me:

The bottom and sides go up one foot as a continuous piece w/ the edges folded vs. cutting them. This is how hospitals make a waterproof lip w/ flooring. I then added overlapping sides from the top down to cover the wood. The wood was heavily coated in spar urethane and allowed to cure for a month before i added the linoleum.

Yes, that will work fine. However it looks like you did the bottom corners backwards, putting the floor in after the walls? Or is it the pic? Also, you don't need all the varathane stuff. I've just primed and painted walls with latex paint, finished and dried in a few hours if not less, and works totally fine. High gloss, preferably, or at least semi.

The floor portion was laid down first, the excess folded UP the walls, then another layer wall portion comes down from the top and overlaps the floor portion about a foot or so up the sides. This seals the seams of floor portion down under so the monitor can't pick it away from walls. Could i have worded that any more confusingly? Nope.