Ikea enclosure

[brain]

At the Reptile show last year, this guy made his viv with sliding doors and between the doors, he placed a strip of door weather stripping made of foam rubber with a sticky backing. I’m sure it made a deterrent.

As for the flexibility of the door “if”, it becomes and issues try gluing a strip of hardwood on the outside of the most outer door.

I do like the configuration access from the front. I keep reading that the ppl on here with viv that open to the front, seems to make the snake more at ease. Something I need to look at when building my next unit with a water feather for the Puget’s.

[chris-uk]

We have a lot of Ikea bookshelves (mostly containing our books). We don't have the Expedit units but I'm inspired by this project to try a modification to our shelves to move Binky into the living room or office when she needs a bigger viv.

[kibakiba]

Don't let her talk you into transforming your office into a snake room, like mine did. I barely have room to exercise now.

[BLUESIRTALIS]

You did a great job converting that into an enclosure.

My only concern would be with the vermiculite as a substrate.
Do you feed your snakes in the enclosure? My concern is with ingesting that material.

Im with you on this one Steve i would be scared to use vermiculite as a substrate too. Vermiculite holds humidity so that may be an issue in it's self. I also read somewhere that vermiculite has asbestos in it which could effect the snakes long term. I would try to use something else.

[Serpico]

Im with you on this one Steve i would be scared to use vermiculite as a substrate too. Vermiculite holds humidity so that may be an issue in it's self. I also read somewhere that vermiculite has asbestos in it which could effect the snakes long term. I would try to use something else.

Well, not that I hold Vermiculite shares...but I have sort of field tested it for some years, and my thoughts are that:

in regard of humidity, it is true to an extent, I am actually thinking that the viv is too dry (hence Mila's bad shed, see the related thread), and if I do not add water to the substratum, it remains pretty dry;
the size of the pellets is too big to be ingested. I have seen both garters drag stuff while inside, and no pellet is likely to end up inside their mouths:
for the asbestos..with the current laws in Italy, there is NO possibility that something is produced and sold with even a 0,1% of asbestos in it. And whatever contains asbestos has to be replaced or sanitized ASAP.

My only concern regarding vermiculite is that out of the shelf, the vermiculite bag can't be used into a viv, it needs to be washed and dried (and I dry it into a oven at at least 100 C°, better safe than sorry)...

/me waves cheerfully

Pg

[BLUESIRTALIS]

Well, not that I hold Vermiculite shares...but I have sort of field tested it for some years, and my thoughts are that:

in regard of humidity, it is true to an extent, I am actually thinking that the viv is too dry (hence Mila's bad shed, see the related thread), and if I do not add water to the substratum, it remains pretty dry;
the size of the pellets is too big to be ingested. I have seen both garters drag stuff while inside, and no pellet is likely to end up inside their mouths:
for the asbestos..with the current laws in Italy, there is NO possibility that something is produced and sold with even a 0,1% of asbestos in it. And whatever contains asbestos has to be replaced or sanitized ASAP.

My only concern regarding vermiculite is that out of the shelf, the vermiculite bag can't be used into a viv, it needs to be washed and dried (and I dry it into a oven at at least 100 C°, better safe than sorry)...

/me waves cheerfully

Pg

Do you think the vermiculite could be drying mila out because it seems to draw moisture and you can only use very little for plants because it will take all the moisture away and soak it up like a sponge.