Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently painted my new plywood enclosure with a interior non toxic (no offgassing and no VOC's)latex environmentaly friendly paint (greenseal certified) that is recomended for schools, health care facilities and hospitals. After painting the cage I noticed it says on the paint can that the paint has a mildrew resistant coating on the paint film. Does anybody know if this is safe for herps? If so I am considering putting contact paper over it or paint over it.

I have heard of caulks and tile grouts with anti-fungal/mildew agents being used in reptile cages with no apparent ill effects. This does not mean they are non-toxic, however.

Personally I would not hesitate to use the paint you described in one of my Gonyosoma cages, and they are notoriously delicate snakes. But that is only my opinion, ultimately it's your peace of mind that matters. Unfortunately it's very difficult to say whether or not something is safe for all herps. Not unlike some snake mite treatments that are said to be "proven safe" but then are known to cause neurological problems in a few snake species.
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Currently keeping a small collection of various Gonyosoma. Both G. janseni and G. oxycephala.

Your best bet is "milk paint". Made from the obvious and completely non-toxic. Use a water based environmental safe sealer afterwards. Milk paint dries in minutes and ready to seal in an hour. Mixable, comes in a powder form. Just add water. I've used it on several cages.

Mike

Just an FYI, the safety of milk paint has been heavily questioned in recent years. It certainly contains few toxic chemicals than other paints but the concern with milk paint is that it never fully cures. I have read on professional finishing forums that it is not recommended to be used on furniture or toys that will be around young children. Personally I think this is silly but I do understand the argument.

And to further confuse matters, a few companies are now making "milk paint" that has extra hardeners, etc. in it and is no longer the environmental-friendly product that the real stuff is. But it has the same look as milk paint and is a suitable replacement, at least from an appearance standpoint. I believe all the powdered stuff is real, however. The "fakes" are premixed, IIRC.

One thing I need to bring up here is that environmentally friendly does not necessarily equal herp (or child) safe. In many cases fewer nasty chemicals means for a product that does not cure fully and has associated safety hazards (like milk paint, supposedly). On the other hand, a product that is not as "green" as others may be better able to cure fully and be safer (to children and pets) in the long run.

And I do have to question the use of environmentally safe sealers. Often these are just normal old products that are diluted down to meet some arbitrary categorization of VOC's per volume. So the product that now has been diluted 1:1 now requires twice as many coats to achieve the same amount of protection, so twice as many VOC's are utilized anyways.

It has been suggested that these products are actually LESS environmentally safe as there is all of the extra material in packaging and because of the extra gas and trucking space required to essentially ship around what turns out to be extra water.

This makes a lot of sense to me. One only needs to compare an environmentally safe product to its regular counterpart. Often there is no difference and if there is a difference it's simply a matter of the reduction in VOC's being equal to the reduction in solids, which means you're paying for water and need to apply more coats for equal protection.
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Currently keeping a small collection of various Gonyosoma. Both G. janseni and G. oxycephala.