Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been putting off getting a rack built for my snake collection, but since I have a baby on the way I need to get it done ASAP so we can get the baby room set up. My plan is to build an open sided rack that will hold about 10 or so snakes. Right now my collection consists of two baby balls, a 5-6 foot corn, two 3 footish corns, and two black racers also in the 3 foot range.

I like to challenge myself and so I set one for this project and that is to find all my materials and stuff locally. This is where I could use some help!!

I think I've finally decided to just go with an open sided rack design, but am having an issue deciding on the material. I have not been able to find a place that carries a large enough sheet of melamine (though I have a few more stores to try so I'm keeping my fingers crossed). All the melamnie I seem to be able to find is only suitable for building hatchling or yearling racks and not a full sided rack. I did find some 4x8 pieces of 1/2" birch hardwood today that looked like they'd make a nice rack. Anyone have experience/opinions about this material?

I have also been toying with an idea I saw in another post. A guy used threaded metal poles as the sides of the rack and then used nuts and washers to hold the shelves in place. To me this seems pretty ingenious since when/if we end up moving to a new house/apartment the rack would be easily transportable. Does anyone know where I could find threaded poles/pipe? They would need to be roughly 4-5 foot long for what I have in mind.

For the tubs I have decided to just stick with the Sterilite 41qts that I have been using. I managed to find the Iris CB110's at the local Bed Bath and Beyond, but at $18 bucks a pop are a little more that twice as much as the Sterilites for not much more room (IMO).

Now the part that I realy could use some help with...Heat Tape! I can find it on the net easy so I suppose if I can't find it locally I'll just admit defeat and order some. However, I'd really like to complete my challenge so I'd like to know if people have found it rather than ordering it online? I'm specifically looking for the 3" 6watt variety, but the 4" would be alright too. I've looked at places like Home Depot and didn't think I'd find it so wasn't too suprised when I didn't. Perhaps garden/botanical shops?

Any help would be great...thanks.
Dan
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1.0.0 Snow Corn Snake (Suzie - it's a funny story)
0.1.0 Normal Corn Snake (F.U.)
1.0.0 Amelanistic Corn Snake (Tohper)
1.1.0 Black Racers (Diablo & Noir)
1.1.0 Normal Ball Pythons (Trogdor & Samantha)
1.0.0 Red Eared Slider (Fish)

Your only real chance on finding heat tape locally will be if a petshop carries it (1 of my local ones does, the other doesn't, so good luck).

Regarding building material my personal favorite (at the moment) is white oak ply. Looks really good and is easy to work with.
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Randall L Turner Jr.
Boas make the world go round.

I did find some 4x8 pieces of 1/2" birch hardwood today that looked like they'd make a nice rack. Anyone have experience/opinions about this material?

I assume you mean a 4x8 piece of birch plywood, not hardwood?

If so, I have used it to build racks and it works fine. I have a slight preference for melamine so you might try to call lumber yards and see if they have it.

Some of the larger boxes can be hard to build racks for with the typical 4x8 sheet material, at least not without a lot of waste. You might check and see if you can find true Baltic Birch plywood which comes in 5x5 sheets. Not sure about the CB-110 specifically, but the 5x5 size works well for some of the other large boxes.
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Currently keeping:

6.10 Gonyosoma oxycephala (Javan, mixed colors)

1.1 Philodryas baroni

1.0 Rhodesian Ridgeback