if I were to paint them a nice dull black, what sort of paint would you recommend to resist the high humidity, as well pose no health threat?
If you are painting wood, I would go to home depot buy some Behr interior primter, in a purple can. This stuff is water based, and dries quickly. Then top coat it with a behr satin paint. You can do a semigloss or high gloss if you like the look, but I wouldn't use less than a satin. (as you can probably tell I work @ home depot, and I really dont know what other brands are good paints - i just know that this IS good and WILL work nicely. As with any water based paint however, you may need to touch up from time to time) Just make sure you give it enough time to off gas before introducing the animals to their new home.
However I wouldn't reccomend to use wooden dowels. A couple reasons. they're expensive, and will eventually rot even if painted/sealed. What I did was got some regular pvc pipe and a propane torch for soldering copper pipe, and burned the pipe. as it heats it becomes flexable letting you bend it in whatever way you want. At the bottom i'll put a pic of my chondros cage, it is 2 inch pipe. I used some 1.5 inch for my colubrids. They're not totally finished yet.
How about scored PVC piping? If so, how would you mount the piping? It doesn't need to be naturalistic, just aesthetically pleasing and safe. Thanks a lot for any ideas.
I don't know what you mean by scored pvc. As I said i'd reccomend to torch it. Just try not to breathe the fumes while you burn it... they stink! You can attach them to the cage walls a couple different ways... you can get some end caps for the pvc, cut in half, screw that to the wall then lay the pipe in there (i screwed the pipe to the cap as you can see in the picture). you can also just screw the pvc to the inside wall of the cage (what i'm doing for my colubrids)
One thing I would reccomend is to get some cheap foam from walmart or any crafts store (used for arranging flowers or something) and place in the ends of the pipe... i've been told that this guys chondro died because he got stuck in a pvc perch.
Any more questions let us know!
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-Chris
The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin
A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?
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Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
0.1 Texas Bairdi (Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)
1.0 Green Tree Python (Monty)
