Creating a dark cage environment?

[Panic]

when I am off work, I am often home all night with the lights on and the TV going. I usually go to bed at 6AM. This will unfortunately put my hamster at being in the light 24/7. That’s been shown to have a negative effect on human me take health, and I found a study showing hamsters exposed to dim light and especially blue light are more depressed than hamsters in no light.

I have a very small apartment, with not much room to create whole dark areas. I’ve thought about putting a dark sheet over his cage, or putting it under the table so he’ll at least be in shadow.

Any ideas?

[Pebbles82]

You could just put a sheet or blanket over the cage Watch out for chewing though - I've had a hamster chew a fleece blanket through the bars! Also does he have a large house that's dark inside? That helps - if they have somewhere dark to retreat to when they need to. A shoebox house is ideal. Cut the base out and sit it on top of the subsrtrate and use the lid as a lift off roof (for checking inside so you don;t have to lift the house out and it stops the nest falling apart). If you cut a hole for a door at one end of the long side and put a bendy bridge overthe door, the hamsterwill nest at the end furthest away from the door where it's darkest.

With a larger house like that, they often then move their pee spot into a corner of the house, so it's a good idea to put a corner litter tray inside the house in the back corner at the door end. Has worked for me every time!

This corner litter tray is ideal - you put Chinchilla sand in it which soaks up the pee. Also means less cage clean outs needed, so the hamster gets less stressed (they get stressed by a lot of cleaning out).

You can then just take the roof off to empty the litter tray every few days. And put more sand in it. The roof also doubles up as another platform and the bendy bridge tunnel makes a ramp up to the roof. Must beChinchilla sand though, not "dust".

I would still put something over the cage to make it darker during the night as that is the time they are most likely to be out and about in the cage, but they do still nap during the night and go back to their house.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hamster-cor...=Hamster+potty

Might be an idea to put a couple of books on top of the cage, and then something like a fleece blanket over the top - so the blanket isn't directly over the bars so they can't chew it. Also don't cover it completely (for ventilation) so there is still a bit of the bars showing at the bottom. If it's a solid sided tank then you mightneed to leave an air gap at one end of the lid that isn't covered.

[cypher]

It's a difficult one if you are going to be having the lights on when it would normally be dark & they're most active, I wouldn't put a blanket or sheet over the cage, if you cover it sufficiently to block out the light you won't have enough ventilation which is even more important at night while they're active.
Putting the cage under a table might be a better option & maybe you could block off some of the light getting to the area under the table without blocking the air flow.