Yes Zooplus has a great choice - I was told about it on here too! And yes that is another option - get something like the Hamster heaven and attach it. Although actually I think it means having a mental shift in terms of set up. The more space a hamster has, the more you can create an enriched environment for them, with different levels, textures, places to go things to do, but within normal behaviours. Tubes as floor toys (or tied to the roof or sides of cage) are better for normal behaviours than connecting tubes.
If you did have one larger cage,connected with tubes to the smaller ones, you would probably find the hamster would fall back on normal behaviours,do everything in the larger cage and not use the smaller add-on ones anyway.
The other thing with tubes is - hamsters can get stuck in them - especially if they have full pouches. If you have a smaller syrian that may not be the case. They are also escape routes (can break or be pushed out) and they can also block them up causing cleaning difficulties -or nest and pee in them - they like to block off the entrance to their nest. The more you clean the more it causes stress for them.
So it's easier to have an infrequent cleaning routine with a larger cage and more substrate (hamsters like moving this substrate around, building mountains out of it etc.)
People who get the Hamster Heaven usually end up removing all the tubes and blocking them off for that kind of reason - it just doesn't work for the hamster and their normal behaviours go a bit skewiff and it creates cleaning difficulties.
I have the Barney cage from Zooplus. It costs a bit more than the Alaska but comes with everything needed except a wheel and toys. It has a good sized house for a syrian to nest in, and a good shelf they can sit under and you can put harder or heavier toys on (so they don't sink or get tunnelled under) and a good deep base for plenty of substrate. The deeper the substrate is, the less often it needs cleaning out - you can just spot clean - or use a litter tray and empty that every 5 days or so.
So one larger floor area with different "areas" for doing things in - is better than a few areas joined together. And hamsters have no option but to use the tubes if they need to get to their food or wheel whereas they can just hop out of their house and onto their wheel and back if it's all in one area.
Having said that, as long as one cage is big enough (80cm by 50cm approx) is a commonly accepted minimum size for a Syrian) then it's ok to have add on cages.
It's difficult when you've already bought things. I had an expensive mistake with our first hamster cage - a 3 tier rotostak thing. I ended up binning it as I didn't want to sell it to anyone else. And our hamster did get stuck in a tube! Twice - it was a nightmare. And he absolutely loved his 80 x 50 cage and you could almost see him smile! Their behaviour changes.
It took a good 10 days for him to adjust to the bigger cage and he was scared and would shake at first, but then by day 10 he was leaping around and doing all sorts.
I then found 80 x 50 (Hamster Heaven size) wasn't quite big enough to fit things in and still have enough floor space - or for larger toys. Some of the larger toys (rat sized) work very well for Syrians.
So our Syrian has a large house that is dark inside and has a flat roof which makes an extra platform. His toilet tray is inside the house and he uses it = the rest of the cage stays dry. Plus his shelf and wheel and a couple of large cork log tunnels (that he loves running through because they're dark and big enough to sit under) and climb over because they're interesting and natural texture.
I have a long savic rat tube tied to the roof inside the cage, which leads from a shelf to a rat sputnik and you can put treats in the rat sputnik,or bedding. And he can also climb into the rat sputnik from the other side fromthe top of the cork log.
He regularly moves his substrate around to where he wants it deeper, or to insulate the outside of his house if it gets colder. The hyacinth tunnels are great - they are big enough for a syrian without being too big and have holes in the side so they can chew it and weave in and out of the the holes. They have been popular with both our syrians.
So the more enrichment you can give in one cage area,the more interesting and stimulating and fun it is for them to be able to do hamstery things. Enrichments is different textures,levels, plenty of substrate - a hide that is dark inside where they can build a big nest in winter, and things to chew, places to go and climb a bit (but not too high).
This was a kind of vague layout when we first got it for our last Syrian, to work out where everything would go.
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This is the set up for our current Syrian
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He uses the whole cage - the big rat tube is lovely and he likes running through the log tube, under the shelf and snacking and then climbing over the log tunnel onto the shelf and sitting in the round hide on the shelf.
Tubes for pets at home cages
she's a very lovely ham!
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