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I'M THINKING ABOUT CHANGING OVER TO AUTO WATER SYSTEM .ANYONE HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE GOOD OR BAD THEY WOULD LIKE TO SHARE .I CURRENTLY RUN AROUND 300 TRAYS (CAT LITTER BOXES).ANYONE KNOW WHO HAS THE BEST PRICES .I'VE DONE A LITTLE SHOPPING AND HAVE A FEW LEADS.THANKS FOR ANY RESPONSE.JEFF

with that many i tubs i would use an auto water system!!!!!!!

Hello Jeff,

I have used he auto watering before. I used to raise rats and decided to go to the automatic. You can buy the stuff you need from edstrom.com I think that is the address. I bought the 5 gallon setup and some valve and waer line. It was sure alot better than water bottles. I am not sure if they have change the valves or not but I have had the valve stick and leak into a cage. Not sure if the valve got dirty or what but 5 gallons of water in a rubbermaid sure made for a vary nasty mess of dead rats and a terrible smell. So they do have their bad side also. It can happen. I think mainly you just have to check the valves and clean them. You can hook it up to a pressurized water source but I personally would not just for the chance of a flood by a stuck valve. Hope that helps.

Mark

There is no question in my mind that with 300 tubs you would want to use an auto watering system. I would suggest going to agselect.com I have never had one of the valves leak. I've never had a flood. I use 5 gal. buckets on top of each of my racks. These systems make the maintanance so much easier. They have alot of information on how to set up a system that will work best for you. Good Luck, Chris

Thanks for the responses.I know it's kind of a no brainer laborwise i have just heard a few horror stories about leaks and loose rats that chew through tubing to get a drink.Plus the expense will be considerable .I did come across a website last night called country boy cages thats about 10% cheaper than anyone else FYI.thanks again,jeff

np

Denver Tom... how long did you use vanilla in your automatic watering system.

JEFFHERMAN... how did you find time to do anything else but fill water bottles? Wow... 300! I'd go to an automatic system... YESTERDAY. You'll wonder how you lived without it. Agselect has good prices.

MissHisssss

I had used it for about 1 year before it clogged my system up. At 1st, it clogged the screen filter inside that adaptor that hooks up to the bucket. I cleaned the whole system out, or so I thought. A few short weeks later that screen was clogged again and so was a t fitting. I liked the odor controlling aspects of the vanilla but the clogs are just too harmful to the animals if you don't check the system every day.

It's really beginning to get to me!!the grow out cages and the rats are every other day and the breeder cages are about every 4 days. i can actually fill the whole room in about anhour and 15 min.but coupling that with cleaning ,weaning, feeding, pulling pinks, fuzzies , furries counting, baging ,vacuum packing the time I spend filling water bottles can be be spent in a more valuable way.On top of that Ispend about 70 hours a week at work.In all fairness my wife has recently started picking up some the slack thats a tremendous help!thanks for the tips BTW I've never heard of the vanilla thing but it sounds like I don't want to use it.thanks again,jeff

Tom.... I have been using vanilla for about a year with adding some Grapefruit Seed Extract. I get a bit of a slimmy build up too but with my 25 tubs being just a few feet from my kitchen I have to do something about the odor. I change the water once a week and clean out the filter... now that I figured out how to do it, that is... lol. I think the extra work is worth it under my circumstances... but if they were in a shed or something I'd do without it.

Jeffherman.... I admire you. That's a lot of work!!!!!!!

MissHisssss

I'mreally getting curious about this vanilla thing.does it cut down the ammonia odor alot?I have my feed milled for me and was thinking I could just have the mill add some to my feed.How much do you put in say ,a 5 gallon bucket ?I have to buy 5 tons of feed at a time so I might go broke if I had to buy gallons of van. extract. In response to Marksd i have about 60 breeder snakes plus babies so I use alot of mice for my own snakes but I ship out a whole lot more than I use.some of the snakes I work with : 2.2 green tree pythons 2.2 bolivian boas 2.3 braz. rainbows ,col.boas, ball pythons ,alb.son gophers, snow pines ,lots of blairs phase graybands,goini,emory,creamsickle sp?rosy boas ,cal.kings .thanks, Jeff

One teaspoon per gallon. And I have noooo idea if it would work if added to their food. It keeps down the musky odor the males make. I don't know if the vanilla or my keeping them clean takes care of the ammonia order, so I can't honestly answer that part of you question.

MissHisssss

I forgot to mention that imatation vanilla extract works better than the pure, and more expensive, vanilla extract. There is an explaination for it somewhere in my filing cabinate, I'm just too lazy to find it.

MissHisssss

Are you produce all these for yourself or do you sell them?