Reptile & Amphibian Forums

FOr those of you that have built your cages. Was it cheaper? What did you use and how did you do it? thanks. COuld someone post up some homemade enclosures? thanks again

Melamine seems to be this months popular choice of material and it is way cheaper than buying one. Compare the cost of 6 pieces of wood/melamine with a 100 G fish tank. Check out froggystyle's posts somewhere around here. He built a nice cage.

here is mine it here is the run down of the cost.

4x8 sheet of melamine= $25
2 four foot and 2 2 foot pieces of poplar= $10
one GE 2 foot light strip= $11
two cabinet lighting fixtures= $12
50 pounds of sifted and washed playsand= $5
logs and rocks already had them got them from a friend and outdoors.

a big cage for the dragon to enjoy= priceless.

sorry i couldnt resist

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0.1 Albino Cal. King (Fokker)
1.0 Reverse Okeetee Corn (trouble)
0.1 Creamsicle Corn (Spot)
1.1 Bearded Dragons (Bob & Margret)
1.1 Dogs(George and Ladybird) they are rescues.
1.0 Betta
0.1 Wife
0.1 Kid

I just finished building a new cage for my dragons. It's basically a cabinet with three shelves. I put in plexiglass (I think) sliding doors. Mine houses three dragons (each on a seperate level). It cost about $300, but there were things I did to it that didn't need to be done, so it could be done for less.
First, I used expensive lighting. Mine are 3 light tracks that plug into an outlet. They don't need to be wired. These run $20 each. So, cut out $60 there.
I also covered the floors with ceramic tile because it holds heat nicely. It's not completely covered just to save some hassle. I used the cheapest tile available, at $.98 each. I could have went with a black tile, which was more expensive, but it wasn't necessary. This was approximately $20 added to the project cost because I am including adhesive in this expense.
I put 4 corner joints on each shelf for support. While this is not necessary, it was a huge help in making it more stable. I don't think it would be necessary on a single level cage. I would definetly use these when building a multilevel cage.
I used melamine closet boards (the ones with the little holes in them). They only came in widths up to 16" inches, but I just settled for it. I built it to 6 1/2' high. The reason for this was to allow some extra space in case I measured the doors a little wrong. I was glad I decided that when my mom measured the spaces slightly off. It also keeps the lowest cage off the ground. In a basement with a cement floor, I felt that was important.
Costs I did not include are those of the new light bulbs I needed to buy for this cage. I used 75 watt bulbs in the basking spot, have ordered coil uv lights for the center (I also put them outside or I might have used strip lights). At the far end I am using regular coil lights. They are low wattage but give off the light of a higher wattage bulb. They also last a long time. This should be lower cost for heating than the 150 watt bulbs I used to need.
Oh, last thing. I used pegboard on the back for air circulation. I've seen other people using air registers, but I didn't wanna mess around with that.
This is way cheaper than buying equivalently sized cages.
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4.0.0 Bearded Dragons (Yusuke- Fat Lazy type , Woodrow- Dragon with an attitude, asleep for the winter, Tehko- The baby, little dirt ball, Dexter- just a brat, also asleep for the winter)
1.0.0 Rankins Dragons (Erik-a midget)
1.0.0 Cat- the regular variety (Dominic- fat cat)
0.1.0 Dog- Lab mix(Betty- escape artist extraordinaire)
1.0.0 Beta - I can't remeber his name (just swims around)
0.0.1 Guinea Pig (Timothy)
1.0.0 Red Eared Slider (Franklin)