Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is a part of my garage. It's cooled with a swamp cooler (evaporative cooling system). Has automatic lights and fresh watering with drains on timers (like a sprinkler system). It holds 75 degrees on the hottest of days and keeps humidity at 65% here in the desert.

This is a part of my garage. It's cooled with a swamp cooler (evaporative cooling system). Has automatic lights and fresh watering with drains on timers (like a sprinkler system). It holds 75 degrees on the hottest of days and keeps humidity at 65% here in the desert.

i like that alot! what do you do in the winter to keep them warm enough? what size swamp cooler are you using and doesn't the swamp cooler put too much moisture in the air?

dennis
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working for the man again

very nice looking but what is that that you are using on the side to keep them out of view and does the cage still get enough air circulation that way because i would like to make a rack like that. alos what size are the cages and what is in them

I'm not sure what size the swamp cooler is, but it's not a huge room that they're in, and the swamp cooler does it's job well. It's also VERY cheap to operate and it basically runs all day long and only uses as much power as a fan and a little bit of water (maybe a gallon a day I dunno, it's on a water line). For the winter, there's just a meduim sized oil heater on a thermostat on the other side of the room, so basically it holds an even temperature year round in the room. The air circulation is both by the swamp cooler (blowing a cool breeze into the room) and by a fan on the other side of the room that swings side to side and keeps air flowing. The front and tops of the cages are screen and in between the cages is just a thin piece of masonite (thin sheet of wood). The total height of the whole rack is a little over 8 feet, making each cage just over 3 feet tall with about a foot inbetween the top and bottom rows and a foot on the bottom for lights and drains. The whole thing is also 8 feet long, making each cage 20 inches wide and 2 feet deep (front to back). It doesn't get too humid because the air here is pretty dry, so the swamp gets it up to like 60-70%. The biggest problem with a cage like this is that the doors take forever to make them work right and close nicely, and that crickets escape pretty easily. I cut everything as close as I could and sealed EVERY joint, but somehow someway, they still get out and have started taking over my garage. These cages are filled with panthers, with my pair of veileds being on the bottom left 2 cages. If I had to do it all over again, I would just buy screen cages and make them set up on a rack or something. The crickets escaping are making me mad and I'll probably be throwing this whole setup away in the next few months and starting over completely (besides the lights and fixtures- they were more expensive than everything else about it).
-Tyler Stewart

You could sell it locally. Someone within driving distance might want to purchase that setup from you. I'd look into it before scrapping the whole thing. Seems like a waste to me.

Ww

The thing weighs a TON. Almost literally. It takes 3 guys to even slide it, let alone move it. I shoulda put it on wheels.

I took a long look at the screen cages out there, and looked into making my own caging. I used aluminum screen over a wood frame, but that was a bit expensive. I also tried shade cloth over a PVC frame, but the results were so similiar to reptariums that they really weren't worth the extra effort.
I finally decided that the best, most cost effective method I had for keeping my chameleons was simply to keep them in reptariums outside on pallets. That's what I do during the warm weather. Soon, I'll be moving them to their winter quarters - a steel rack system from Sam's Club.
It does look nice. Too bad you're just gonna dump it.
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Victor Gomez
gomezvi.tripod.com/sdchamkeepers/
gomezvi@yahoo.com