Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I cant seem to find any information or even a picture with enough detail for me to figure out how these are installed. I understand that you buy the tracks.
Do bottom and top come as together or do you need 8 ft for a 4ft long opening? do these tracks need to be screwed or glued onto a wood frame? and at the sides of the doors what is there? a groove in the wood? is there some kind of track for the sides?

When you order 4' of track, for example, you get a total of 8' of track. 4' of shallow track for the bottom and 4' of deep track for the top. This is for both the basic plastic track and the more expensive roller/nylon guide track.

The track does need to be attached to something, although it does not necessarily even need to be a frame per se. I have seen frameless cabinets where the track is simply attached to the top and bottom of the cabinet.

But for a reptile cage you typically want some sort of litter dam and maybe even something to hide lights at the top so a frame is a good way to accomplish this.

How you attach the track really depends on what type of track you buy, with the two basic types being the plastic track and the roller track.

You can also get track for the sides and this is nice for a cage with a less than perfectly square opening as it hides the fact that the glass does not match perfectly with the side or the fact that the glass itself is not perfectly square (or both). Typically just the regular track is used and attached to the sides.

Or you can put a groove in the wood.

Speaking of which, there is also track made from solid wood.
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Currently keeping a small collection of various Gonyosoma. Both G. janseni and G. oxycephala.

thanks you that carlified alot of my questions.

one other thing, can you cut the track? ive seen that they sell it by the foot but what if i needed 2.5 ft of it, would the company send that and calculate the cost accordingly?

Any track I know of can be cut. Maybe some of the more expensive roller tracks with built in locks need to be ordered cut exactly to length, I don't know.

For the plastic track, most places sell it in stock lengths. Outwater sells the plastic track in larger quantity and will cut it to length for you, and in fact has to in order to ship it. Still, it's best to have it cut slightly oversized so you can trim it to your exact specifications.

Outwater would not sell as little as 30" so I'd guess you'd have to order 4' from another company and cut it yourself.
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Currently keeping a small collection of various Gonyosoma. Both G. janseni and G. oxycephala.

thanks that helps

yes, a plastic or even metal track can be cut with a hack saw. you might want to use a mitre box for a straight but it can still be done without it. just be carful not to bend the metal track
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Matt W.
"Judge me all you want...just don't share the verdict"