- Joined
- May 11, 2003
- Messages
- 117
I pretty much favor function over form in my current T housing efforts. I keep smallish, easily maintained enclosures rather than large tanks with rain forest eco-systems. My T’s live in my basement rather than in living room show pieces.
Now that my couple of avic’s are getting fairly large, I have been looking for new enclosures and wanted something that provided easy access for both photo’s and normal maintenance. The traditional upended pet pal approach doesn’t really shine in either regard and, as I said before, I’m just not up to trying to maintain a 20 gallon jungle environment.
So I ended up buying two 4” square plastic display boxes from the local hobby mega store, cut the bottoms out of both boxes and then glued the bottoms together. This left a 4” square x 8” high box with lids on the top AND bottom. I glued in a couple of hardwood ramps for web anchoring and something for the crix to climb on in between meals. The bottom is easily removed for cleaning out boluses and filling the water dish and the top can be popped off to drop in dinner.
The dimensions of the box are just about right for the encouragement of large open topped funnel webs which provide great visibility for photos. I painted the top out a translucent white as an experiment to discourage webbing the lid which seems to have worked. There are plenty vent holes near the top and the water dish keeps the interior humidity at an acceptable level. My A. veriscolor shown in the pic has been living in the new digs for about 6 weeks now and seems to like her new tree house.
If you wanted to use soil, you could find a box with a deeper lid.
Now that my couple of avic’s are getting fairly large, I have been looking for new enclosures and wanted something that provided easy access for both photo’s and normal maintenance. The traditional upended pet pal approach doesn’t really shine in either regard and, as I said before, I’m just not up to trying to maintain a 20 gallon jungle environment.
So I ended up buying two 4” square plastic display boxes from the local hobby mega store, cut the bottoms out of both boxes and then glued the bottoms together. This left a 4” square x 8” high box with lids on the top AND bottom. I glued in a couple of hardwood ramps for web anchoring and something for the crix to climb on in between meals. The bottom is easily removed for cleaning out boluses and filling the water dish and the top can be popped off to drop in dinner.
The dimensions of the box are just about right for the encouragement of large open topped funnel webs which provide great visibility for photos. I painted the top out a translucent white as an experiment to discourage webbing the lid which seems to have worked. There are plenty vent holes near the top and the water dish keeps the interior humidity at an acceptable level. My A. veriscolor shown in the pic has been living in the new digs for about 6 weeks now and seems to like her new tree house.
If you wanted to use soil, you could find a box with a deeper lid.
