Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was hoping to get some opinions/suggestions besides my wife's asking, "what do you mean ANOTHER reptile??"
I'm certainly not a master carpenter but I needed to put something together that would provide storage/ extra space for me and privacy for the herps when the house gets busy.
This'll hold two ten gallon tanks with lights, etc. It's basically just a cut up bifold door, some 2x2's and door casing for the trim that you see. Any opinions and/or suggestions are welcome. It's about 90% finished at this point.

Thanks
Matt

This is just another view of the exterior.

.....that this unit was desgined around 2 10ga aquarium viv's for small terrestrial species. The top two shelves are meant to hold/conceal two vivariums w/ clamp type heat lights and a uv strip each.

Clever use of the door casing to create a decorative top. Looks neat. In your fist pic the color was off enough that I wondered if it was all built with cedar (cringe!) but the second pic obviously shows that it's all pine.
Might not be a master woodworker, but you certainly deserve a pat on the back for pulling off a creative idea and doing a good job on it. Looks great!
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

Matt,

I like it. Looks like you use already built components which always makes things easier and often saves money.

What sort of suggestions are you looking for specifically. I think if you can hide the lights it will work well.

The only suggest I have is to not mount lights directly to the underside of the shelf that supports the upper ten gallon. It will likely heat up too much. Leave an air space and monitor the temps closely. If it gets too hot you may have to slide some Reflectix in there.
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Current snakes:

0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

1.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

7.6 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

0.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

Chris-
Thanks. Your suggestion about the lights is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I knew there'd be something like that that had not occured to me.
The heat lamps are clamp type and I had planned on attaching some 1x2 pieces to the interior of the side walls for those to hang on to. With the louvered side/front I'd hope there'd be enough air movement to not have a problem with those. That was sort of one the inspirations for the use of the louvered doors. The unit has no 'roof' so I'm not worried about the lights for the upper shelf.
For the second shelf I was thinking of mounting the uv strip to the underside of the upper shelf. The way that the shelves are constructed is such that the uv strip would have to be mounted to the frame pieces on the underside of that shelf and not the actual panel that makes the 'floor' of the upper section so the majority of the uv fixture would have about 1 1/2" of airspace between the top of the fixture and the bottom of the top shelf. Does that make sense/ sound safe enough?
If all else fails the uv on the lower unit could just rest atop the screen top.

btw.... I've not forgotten about your alternative tub design. I've actually already graphed out a design and written up the cut list for it. This little project is something to get me by in the interim. I'm in the process of moving and am lacking time/space/$$ for the next 8-12 months

Thanks again
Matt

>>The heat lamps are clamp type..

Is the base plastic or porcelain? Just an FYI, the plastic types are not very safe. If you use them do not exceed the wattage maximum listed - I believe that's 60 watts.

Biggest issue with these is that people forget and put in 100 watt bulbs. The other issue is they think 60 watts is the maximum for any type of bulb and they use 60 watt halogens.

Both scenarios are two of the biggest cause of house fires in the US.

The rest of your description sounds fine. If you're overheating the tank above just loosely pack the space with several folds of aluminum foil.
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Current snakes:

0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

1.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

7.6 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

0.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

The lamp used for my Trib is a plastic base but anything more than a 25 watt lamp tends to overheat her so that one is fine. The other lamp, which will be running a higher wattage will be porceline.

Thanks again for the input