How did you construct that aluminum-framed cage or was that something you purchased as a kit? Does that large cage house tree boas?

I designed it myself. I work for a company that does industrial guarding, so it was done in our machine shop. It houses 2 amazon tree boas and a brazilian rainbow boa. And one very interesting orb weaving spider.

-DH

Hello
That's a very nice setup ?/ What are the dimensions and is it plxiglass??
Going to wait until Feb to put animals in mine.Waiting to see how well the heating system works. gary

DH,
I don't know how much you may look around the 'net at other vivaria, but your cage design with it's aluminum frame looks very much like what is called a "European" cage. I've seen some vivaria on a few sites (all European) showing cages made using aluminum tubing with plastic connector sections. Additionally, ZooMed now makes a Euro cage unit although it's really pricey at nearly $3000 (I think). Anyway, I've toyed with constructing cages using that same method however I've found that the resulting cage is far more expensive than building with more traditional materials and methods. I'm revisiting this issue again because I'd like to build my own vivaria without having to use glass aquaria or wood-based materials (for hopefully obvious reasons). Anyway, aside from the fact that you probably get a pretty good price break on your materials, do you know of a cost effective way to construct cages from aluminum tubing while keeping cost managable. Let me say that my figures showed making a 4'x2'x2' cage using aluminum tubing and expanded pvc panels would have cost more than $400 while buying a pre-made hdpe cage from Vision would've been cheaper by nearly $150.

garyfla: It's 5 feet in diameter and 8 feet tall, 6 feet of which is internal cage space that can be used. The other 2 feet are for the false bottom and stand. The sides and top are all plexiglass.

matt: Yeah, I have a suggestion. Get a job like mine :) In all seriousness, I didn't do it because I thought it would be cheap. Trust me, if I wanted it cheap I would have built a cheap one. I wanted something that no one else has and I think I pretty well accomplished that. As for materials, how many wooden octagon shaped cages have you seen? Keeping that frame nice and thin and out of the way would have been harder with wood. It was a lot easier for me to do it with aluminium. Even with aluminium, it is of course going to be cheaper to do it yourself instead of having someone else do it, but it has problems of its own. There is a lot less room for error than with wood, and you need special tools that you probably don't already have.

-DH