BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Hello,
My skink is already 8 months old, 14 inches, he's starting to grow out his tank and we haven't seen any tanks of good enough size (Here in Florida biggest I seen was a 48Lx13Wx20H) we decided to make one ourselves, we've stumbled on a couple ideas and I was wondering if something like these could work:
or
(Excluding items and animals ) something like this but in a square and shorter in height. Would it be able to work out?

you can defently make a terrarium out furniture.
Never done it myself though but i have seen people do it.

I made one out of a cabinet actually. I took out part of each door and replaced it with glass, sealed the inside, and added ventilation and lighting. It wasn't too hard and looked nice.

It can definitely be done, but from reading and my own experience, it is easier to buy the wood and build something and trim it out to look nice. I spent a lot of time last summer going to garage sales trying to find a dresser that would be suitable. Most dressers and suitable furniture are not 2ft deep so that can be an issue and many are much taller than needed causing you to need to use extra electricity to heat unused space.

I plan on building my own soon so I can have a nice viv stack as opposed to the drab white melamine enclosure he currently lives in. This should help convince the wife to allow me to assemble my blue tongue army.

You can look up the Crossfire Enclosure plans online. The Crossfire site has a great tutorial for a basic 4x2x2 enclosure. There are several other designs/tutorials that are essentially the same. If you use oak or birch and trim it instead of leaving it plain, you should be able to make a really nice looking furniture quality enclosure. You can stain/seal the outside to mach your room and then design the inside to fit the design you have in mind. You'll just want to make sure you seal the inside including the seams very well to prevent water damage. I am probably going to use a couple of coats of drylock, caulk the corners, and they possibley tile the walls with either ceramic tile or cork bark panels. I am aiming for something more like 6ft long x2ft deep x 18inches tall to provide plent of space for roaming, hides, etc.. I should be able to do this with 3 4'x8' sheets of 3/4" Oak/Birch plywood and just a few pieces of trim.

Make sure to share your progress once you get a start on whatever route you take!

Alright, I suppose i'll make one. On what section do I put the process in? Advanced or General Discussion?
Also another question, on the inside for the floor, what do I put it as? Wood as well?

Yeah you can use wood. Just seal it really well. You can also line the floor with tile to help file their nails.

It would go in the general discussion.

If you seal it with drylok, the paint is actually very rough and will file their nails down when they burrow.

I love making animal cages out of old furniture!

I've made some finch cages and dog beds out of wooden TV frames and dressers.

Here is my 5 foot Hondurans cage and a pic of my next project - a free TV cabinet. I just need to pop out the doors and install wire over them, add a lip guard to keep the bedding from spilling out when I open the doors, add some locks and done!

I've actually justfinished making my own terrarium, it turned out to look like this:



It's made of white melamine. All in all it cost me about $100 and about 12 hours of time (but I really took my time with it). The original tutorial seems to have been deleted, but if you like the look I could try to do up a step by step Guide for you. It came out to 45" x 20" x 18" but there was enough material left over you probably could have made it another 3-5 inches long (I just don't have the room at the moment so I went with slightly smaller). I've also seen many people convert cabinets (I was originally going to do this). If you do want to do it that way your 'key words' are "TV center", "Entertainment Center", "Glass front dresser" and "Display cabinet" check kijiji or craig's list.

Those are some really pretty Terrariums, there should be a different thread for terrariums, terrarium ideas, and how-to's, how big does the terrarium have to be for it be big enough for him to wander around comfortably without being forced to bump into a bowl or a plant/decor?

We might be getting off topic here, but I do agree that a separate habitat/enclosure forum might be handy. I love seeing the variety of ideas everyone comes up with.

saisaac wrote:We might be getting off topic here, but I do agree that a separate habitat/enclosure forum might be handy. I love seeing the variety of ideas everyone comes up with.

Seconded!

I used xpvc to make my custom cages & racks, and I love the heck out of it. Lightweight, fire resistant, works just like wood, water proof...etc etc etc. I'll have to take a pic of mine (keep in mine I plan to tile it, and its breeding season so newspaper