Lol! Yes I've spent a bit on our hammy
You can make things as well though and cardboard boxes, cardboard egg boxes, shoe boxes and toilet roll inners can be useful!
Sorry I didn't realise your girls' ages! Yes I think it sounds fine that you leave their cages in the girls room, but get them out for playtime in the lounge in a playpen area. Although you'd need to get them out one at a time, or in different rooms!
I don't know the cage you mentioned, but most commercial cages are very small. Zooplus has a good range of cages - the Alaska is an excellent basic cage and only costs about £33 - it also fits a Syrian sized wheel (they need an 11" to 12" diameter wheel so they can run with a straight back). The Barney and Alexander cages are also great cages for a Syrian but they are both 100cm cages - which is good, but you might not have space for two! And also it would cost quite a bit more.
I have the Barney cage for our Syrian. I wouldn't go any smaller than the Alaska for a Syrian personally. It meets the old RSPCA recommended minimum of 80cm by 50cm floorspace.
Zooplus take about 5 to 7 days for delivery though, but delivery is free for cages. There are quite a few 80 x 50 cages on Amazon but they tend to cost a lot more.
Zooplus also sell the Hamster Heaven which is 80 x 50 and a good cage, although a lot of the colourful fun bits often end up being removed either to fit a wheel in or because the hamster is blocking off the tubes.
The Barney cage is actually good value as it comes with a good sized house for a Syrian to nest in and it also comes with an 8" wheel which would do for a Syrian at first. Most cages only come with a 6" wheel which is a bit small even for a dwarf hamster. So you don't really need to buy anything extra for the cage at first. The extra length and platform are very good I find.
This is the Barney cage
Barney Pet Cage | Great deals at zooplus!
This is the Alaska cage - it's not as big - 84cm wide by 48cm deep. It also has a nice big front opening door which means access is good. The white house on the shelf isn't good though - the holes are too small for a Syrian - but it can be removed and the shelf is ok without it as it's solid underneath.
Alaska Hamster Cage | Free P&P on orders £29+ at zooplus!
This is the Alexander cage - it costs a bit more but comes with a nice big long house set into the base, and a couple of other houses and a kind of racetrack of shelves - almost another level. One of the houses has a tiny round window that either needs blocking off or the house removing (one member's syrian got his head stuck in it).
Great deals on small pet cages at zooplus: Alexander Small Pet Cage
If you had the space in their rooms, I'd go for the Barney cage - it's easy to set up, and it has narrow 7mm bar spacing - so it could be suitable for a dwarf hamster in the future. The narrow bars make bar chewing much more difficult, but a bigger cage often stops bar chewing anyway (there are a number of reasons for bar chewing but cage stress is one of them).
If you don't want to risk bar chewing, then the Zoozone 2 is a good perspex tank style - if you don't mind meshing the top (the bar spacing is 2cm wide - too wide for a hamster).
Personally I think something like the Barney cage gives a lot more size for the same floorspace with the shelf and bars to hang things on. I've got things tied to the roof in mine to make another level and access from one shelf to another, which makes it fun for them.
A 100cm cage would sit on top of a chest of drawers for example - it doesn't matter if there's a bit of overhang either side.
On the other hand, two Alaska's works out a lot cheaper and you'd need to buy a bigger wheel for the Barney at some point anyway.
This is our Syrian's Barney cage set up - and if you look on the Let's see your cages thread for this last year, you'll see a few ideas for cages and set ups
Our Barney has different coloured bars (I got it from a different seller in a hurry) but it's exactly the same cage).
