Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm considering purchaseing a vision cage and i'm looking for opinions on there overall functionality. what are the pros/cons with these enclosures. It's not a cheap purchase and I don't want to find out the drawbacks after purchaseing one. Anyone who owns one or has worked with these enclosures I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject. I appreciate your time in reading and responding to this post. Thanks, Clint

I like them. I also like picking them up so cheap because other people do not like them. They're easy to clean and and very sturdy.
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Greg Holland
G&M HERPS
www.imageevent.com/gmherps
gmherps@sbcglobal.net

Very durable plastic cages. The HDPE material is about the easiest-to-clean material out there and also perhaps one of the toughest plastics one can use for a cage. The other is probably ABS ala Neodesha cages.

Great cages for boas, pythons, sizeable lizards and medium to large colubrids. Now Vision makes smaller sizes for smaller snakes/lizards.

Depending on the heating requirements, heating may become an issue but can be solved. The saying "Vision cages are hard to heat" is true only if you don't use your ingenuity and the available heating products out there. For example, If you are housing an exotic like a ball python and you require heat over most of the cage, heat panels work extremely well.

The only drawback if any is visibility. Being that the material color is somewhat dark and the geometry is square, you may need to have a small fluorescent light for visibility when you clean. Some models have lots of height which means more access and visibility, while other models are very low.

I have over 60 of them in 6 different sizes. I heat some with undertank heaters, some with overhead aluminum cup lamps and some with radiant panels. Some of my visions are over 6 years old and still look as though they are brand new.

They are the only plastic cage that is molded out of one single piece of plastic. All other plastic cages on the market are screwed together or glued together, making them look great when you first get them, but not so great a year or two later.

Vision appears to outsell all other plastic cages combined. I doubt that would be the case if there was a better cage on the market. If somebody comes up witha better way to manufacture plastic cages, they will make a mint, but I'd say they have their work cut out for them.

Used to be Vision didn’t have all that much competition. That situation is changing. I have over 40 Vision cages. I’m not sure I’d make the same choice today. Probably not. I purchased a couple of small Boaphile racks last year, and I’ve recently ordered a Habitat Systems rack and an Animal Plastics cage. It’s nice to have options.

Anyway, if you search on “Vision” on Kingsnake you’ll get LOTS of opinions to read. How suitable these cages are for you, of course, depends on your particular situation and the species you plan on putting in them. Here are a couple of threads I participated in regarding Vision cages:

forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=270178,270283&key=2003
forums.kingsnake.com/viewarch.php?id=173585,175146&key=2003

-Joan

>>I'm considering purchaseing a vision cage and i'm looking for opinions on there overall functionality. what are the pros/cons with these enclosures. It's not a cheap purchase and I don't want to find out the drawbacks after purchaseing one. Anyone who owns one or has worked with these enclosures I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject. I appreciate your time in reading and responding to this post. Thanks, Clint

I have four Vision cages... I think they're the #221s.

On the upside, they're easy to heat, look nice, and you don't have to know anything about cage building.

On the downside...

1) The cages seem to sag a bit. It's difficult to insert/remove doors on the lowers cages in a stack.

2) I find that they're a pain in the neck to clean. Stuff doesn't stick to them, but there's a lip all the way around the door which makes it difficult to remove every last piece of substrate from the cage

3) For the #221, the cage isn't tall enough. It's fairly deep, but the opening isn't very wide. Reaching all the way to the back of the cage by hand is a pain in the butt!

4) Doors don't open very far. Due to the fact that the doors are setup in a bypass arrangement, you don't get a very big opening with the #221. For easy access, you have to remove the doors (which can be difficult, as noted above).

5) I always seem to end up with substrate stuck in the door tracks.

6) They're expensive. Now that I own tools and know how to build my own cages, I probably wouldn't buy them again.

If I were going to buy a pre-made cage, I think that Boaphile is probably the way to go.