Reptile & Amphibian Forums

10 x 16 building, about 100 cages, pine shavings for substrate,
window unit for AC, an exhaust fan, & clean the cages about once/week.
The ammonia levels start getting bad on about day two.
I used the predecessor to Carefresh once, but it was waayyyy too expensive (About $65. for one cleaning vs. $7.00 for pine).
Any suggestions for removing ammonia from the air?
Thanks,
Max
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"How the hell do you find a Heloderma in a snowstorm?"

& give a report.
Might be a week, or two, or three though...
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"How the hell do you find a Heloderma in a snowstorm?"

I have just recently started using a product that is actually for horse stalls, it is called sweet pdz. So far it has seemed to really knock down the ammonia smell. here is the link to the company website, http://sweetpdz.com/ I use the granulated size in my tubs.

Tom

This looks interesting - Starting to get on the right track.
There's some interesting info on their site.
I'd like to incorporate this into an air filter.
It'd be nice to come out of my rodent building & not feel like I have to take a shower
Thanks, again,
Max
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"How the hell do you find a Heloderma in a snowstorm?"

I have 24 hour window exhaust. Do you have rats or mice? Pine is ok for mice but not rats. Pine causes respiratory disease in rats. I use aspen, it comes in a big bale and is about $13 a bale. PetCo and PetSmart carry it. Cost more then pine. I hate carefresh.

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Shannon in Reno
1.0 savannah monitor (Pombe-means "beer" in Swahili)
2.4 dogs
1.0 cat
5.32 rats
6.44 mice
7.50 chickens
1.2 beardies
0.1 black rat snake
~500 hissers
1 giant millipede
0.1 Chissel tooth kangaroo rat
1.1 rabbits
1.0 wonderful husband

I've got both rats & mice - yeah I know...you're not s'posed to keep 'em in the same building. I also have kept them on pine for close to forty years. The only problem I've ever had, health wise,
is that once in a while I'll get a rat that holds its head sideways & spins when you pick it up by the tail; always figured it was an inner ear thing - They get fed off.
I used to have fancy mice, but now just have the Swiss.
My rats are a new colony (AC went out last summer & cooked all of them ). They are a mixed lot of fancies - All colors, hoodeds,
rexes, hairless, probably dumbos (but I don't pay attention to that trait). I don't have any Siamese, but would like to get some again.
My favorites are pure black & a weird "negative pattern" hooded that's all black, but two shades of black. I also like the blues.
The hairless I'm breeding for is more to keep my croc tank clean; the hair doesn't get digested & tends to clog the filters
The nutsy rat people don't get it! If it weren't for large-scale breeders, they'd never have a pet rat, let alone all the cool morphs.
Cheers,
Max
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"How the hell do you find a Heloderma in a snowstorm?"

Well said about the pet rat stuff. They don't realize that inbreeding rats and mice is what gets all the different colors.
The head tilt is a middle ear infection and that is the main cause of resp disease. If you ever have an adult rat die, necropsy it and see if it has puss in it's lungs. Rats can live a long time with resp disease. They will usually die because the puss pockets get so big on the lungs that they suffocate. It is pretty gross see green puss pore out of lungs.
I have always kept my mice and rats in the same room and have never had problems. But I never bring new mice or rats in. So once you produce a good clean colony and never bring any new ones in they should stay clean.
I feed the nudes to my sav, they go in clean and come out clean.
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Shannon in Reno
1.0 savannah monitor (Pombe-means "beer" in Swahili)
2.4 dogs
1.0 cat
5.32 rats
6.44 mice
7.50 chickens
1.2 beardies
0.1 black rat snake
~500 hissers
1 giant millipede
0.1 Chissel tooth kangaroo rat
1.1 rabbits
1.0 wonderful husband

about the "pet" rat people, they seem to have a lot more problems & health issues than I've ever encountered with all of my experience.
Either they have inferior stock, or their husbandry just sucks!
I don't get it! They say they love them, but I think they just like to care for sick things - Maybe they have Munchausen Syndrome?

Anyways...enough on them.

Take care, & enjoy the serious (realistic) forums
Max
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"How the hell do you find a Heloderma in a snowstorm?"

I thought I was crazy thinking that I had such high quality/just all around kick butt animals. Last night I pulled my husband onto the animal room and asked him if he thought anything was wrong with my rats or if they appeared sick or stressed out. He has been in the animal business for a long time. He said no why and I told him all the stuff the pet people said. In my big rat cage a bunch of "keepers" were sitting on a level and I banged on the cage to see what they would do and they just sat there looking at me as if to say, what the heck are you doing. And these are rats that are held at most 3 times a week. The pet people are stuck with bad stock, we have bad stock-we feed them and only keep the good. So then we only breed good stock. Oh well, I am glad I am not crazy and someone other then me thinks this way. Some of the pet rat health posts give me the heeby geebies.
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Shannon in Reno
1.0 savannah monitor (Pombe-means "beer" in Swahili)
2.4 dogs
1.0 cat
5.32 rats
6.44 mice
7.50 chickens
1.2 beardies
0.1 black rat snake
~500 hissers
1 giant millipede
0.1 Chissel tooth kangaroo rat
1.1 rabbits
1.0 wonderful husband

The pet breeders breed for looks and keep everything alive and breeding.

The feeder breeders breed many more animals, only keeping the best for breeders.

Bottom line is the pet breeders are not getting rid of the inferior animals!
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
24.36 BRB
19.19 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

>>about the "pet" rat people, they seem to have a lot more problems & health issues than I've ever encountered with all of my experience.
>>Either they have inferior stock, or their husbandry just sucks!
>>I don't get it! They say they love them, but I think they just like to care for sick things - Maybe they have Munchausen Syndrome?

Want funny? When I started in the seventies.....rats lived to be five and died of old age. After a couple decades of "pet" rat breeding they have managed to destroy the genes down to a pet that lives 18months and dies of cancer or mycoplasmosis. Yummy.
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Sonya

I'm not mean. You're just a sissy.
Happy Bunny

AN exhaust fan is the way to go. I had a mouse rack i had built capable of housing 400 breeder females, 20 males and several bins of babies. This was housed in a 10ft by 8 ft room. By the time the rack was half full I put in the fan and cranked it up blasting out the window. It dramatically increased the air quality in the room. Of course having no neighbors within several hundred feet of my house helped dramatically as well. I.E if you are in a city raising rodents your neighbors may complain when you install the exhaust fan. Hope this helps...
Oh as far as the pet rat people,
Lets not spend time making fun of them. I don't like them much either, but i don't waste my time on things i don't not like, just those i enjoy.
Sincerely,
Aaron

Max,

Three issues come to mind.

Do you have any leaky water bottles/valves? If so, dampness seems to raise the stink factor.

Is there enough room between the racks for air to circulate? Again the dampness issue. If the air is flowing in thru the vent, down the aisle and out the fan, the the real issue of dampness isn't being addressed.

Density. This may not be something you can lower and still breed enough to reach the required output, but less pee and crap per tub......

DeMak

My whole water system just sprung a leak & flooded the place, but I had ammonia issues before that.
Sometimes the holding cages get a bit overcrowded, but that's only a part of the problem.
A friend did say I ought to put a big fan in there to increase the turbulence, & I haven't done that yet. I've got a small interior fan, but need one that oscillates.
I don't have a vent per say; The inflowing air just comes in through the cracks, but the fan seems to be pulling air out quite well - problem with that is that my AC runs longer.
One of the humidity problems is living in N. TX. When I lived in SoCal it wasn't a problem.

Thanks,
Max
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"How the hell do you find a Heloderma in a snowstorm?"