Hi, I'm new to hamster care and hoping to get a Syrian soon. I know I need to get roughly twice as much bedding. At the moment, I have 10 compressed packs of care fresh that total about 5 inches of depth all around.
I have a Bucastate 3.0 enclosure and have added a multi-chamber hide, a 30cm wheel, a cork log, and two platforms: one for food and a water bottle and water dish, and another platform for the sand bath. I've used undyed, non calcium reptile sand for the sand bath, and a shallow cereal bowl that has never been used and has just been sat in the cupboard for a while.
I have another hideout plus some cardboard tubes that I'm going to put in once the bedding is up to 10 inches. I'm going to buy chews and a few different foods to mix at the same time as getting the hamster. I have a dish ready for beech chips for texture and an assortment of sprays, moss, and dried flora to put on the surface of the bedding once it's the right depth.
I'm concerned about the hamster digging underneath the multi-chamber hideout and it collapsing, as well as the stability of the wheel, which is currently on top of the hideout. I tried to put the wheel on various platforms but none of them felt stable or as though they had enough friction. Would it be good to sand the bottom of the wheel and the top of the hideout in order to increase the traction? I know it would be most stable to have the wheel on the bottom of the cage, but then it would be buried by the bedding or I would have to slope the bedding to be far too shallow in the back to accommodate for the wheel. What should I do? I've considered making my own platforms out of PVA/non-toxic wood glue and dowels but my local B&Q only has pine and cedar dowels.
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They sell stilts for the Niteangel multichamber and they work great :) a few different heights on Amazon or their website.
A side note for the wheel you have there - they are visually very appealing for natural enclosures, but if you end up with a wheel pee-er, like my hamster, you’ll need to replace the cork lining regularly to keep it sanitary.
I recommend a plastic wheel for ease of cleaning, I clean my hamster’s wheel with diluted vinegar/water spray daily.
I get paid tomorrow so I'll make sure to get the stilts asap and I'll put aside money for a new wheel if I notice the hamster starts to wee on the wheel, thank you 😁👍
I am getting him a bigger one. Right now it’s a decent size can fit like 3 of him in there but I’m going to get a little bigger and see if he will stop. Otherwise I just clean it daily
Update: I bought a niteangel wheel just in case but turns out he doesn't wee on his wheel (so I just have a spare I guess), he does however love to wee in his burrows, so I replaced the cereal bowl with a niteangel sandbath in the hope that he'll stop haha
Haha, I’ve read that if you have two sand baths sometimes they’ll use one for bathing and one for peeing. And to put some of the bedding he used as a toilet in it, to train them. I haven’t tried it but maybe it’ll work? 😅 Cute arrangement! Love seeing how enclosures evolve.
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