Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently aquired some 1/4" acrylic and I am going to be making 2 cages for my adult ATBs.I was thinking of haveing them 3'high 2'deep and 2' wide. The top will be acrylic to keep in moisture but have a screen circle to hold a light dome with a heat emitter. There will be venting on the sides near the top. I will also goinjg to have 3 levels of perches. Are there any things that I'm am leaving out?

If you use heat you will have warping and cracking problems with 1/4" material. When I started building acrylic cages I made the mistake of using 1/4" material.
CraigC

I disagree with Craig. I purchased a number of TNS cages back in 2000. Out of 16 cages, the 6 smaller ones are made of 100% 1/4 inch material. All of them are heated with heat panels attached to the back of cages. They came that way from the manufacturer. I haven't experienced any warping or cracking. The worst thing that has happened is that some of the black paint on my heat panels has flaked off. When they first arrived one of the smaller cages had a crack in the door. The company made good on that right away by replacing the unit and I was even permitted to keep the damaged cage. On that cage the door does warp along the crack when the heat is on. I'm sure that is caused by the damage. If Craig is experiencing warping and cracking I would bet that grade of the material is the problem. I was told by TNS that acrylic comes in different grades and you want to make sure you get the best stuff which is machine grade. Also on my big cages whole front of the cage, doors and drawers both are 3/4" material. I did ask why and they said something about long unsupported edges will warp otherwise. My cages were'nt cheap when I bought them three years ago and they are even more expensive now, but I'm sure you'll get what you pay for. I'm planning on buying more of these from TNS because the quality is the best I've seen. If you are going to build your own, use high quality material which should eliminate any problems like warping unless the design isn't sound. If that's the case you'll still have problems even with the thicker stuff.

Sorry,
I should have elaborated more regarding the heat. I was responding to the original posters desire to use reflector type heat emmiters. They will definately warp and crack 1/4" Acrylite.
CraigC

I just built an acrylic cage as well. Have you considered using heat rope instead of the dome lamps? If the ambient temperature in the room is high enough to not need overly agressive heating, that'll probably do the trick quite nicely. It'll also be much easier on the caging material. I got mine from bigappleherp.com. Just hook it up to a thermostat and you're ready to go.