Hamster Central - View Single Post - Newbie: Picket the WW (we think) and his new house.

Pebbles82 · 10-23-2020, 02:13 PM

Sounds exciting! Looking forward to seeing the progress. I am still in the camp of being nervous about using a water bowl and prefer to use bottles - however I also get nervous about bottles not working - the answer is to have two bottles which I did for a long time but now I just check them daily (now I’ve found some I trust!). If you do use a water bowl then ideally it’s best somewhere where it can’t get full of bedding or contaminated.

Something I’m not sure is obvious in some of those kallax hacks - which you may have already thought of, regardless of what type of doors you have. And that is a piece of fixed Perspex onside the door area to keep the substrate in.

Industrial Velcro is fine for attaching water bottles. I’ve tried bottle stands but gave up on them but you might be better at making them than me. There is a toilet roll tube one. Quite simple. The one I made was quite stable but not perfect. You cut the top off a 500ml spring water bottle. Fill the base with stones (I used some nice polished ones stepson got in holiday - technically crystals. And make a hole for the spout just above the stones. The bottle just sits inside the bottle with the spout through the hole which holds it in place. However it was a fiddle making a hole in the bottle without having any sharp edges of plastic and I found sometimes the bottle didn’t sit upright enough so I was forever checking it. Height if the hole depends on species of hamster.

10-23-2020, 02:13 PM
Pebbles82 Hamster Antics Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 23,533	Re: Newbie: Picket the WW (we think) and his new house. Sounds exciting! Looking forward to seeing the progress. I am still in the camp of being nervous about using a water bowl and prefer to use bottles - however I also get nervous about bottles not working - the answer is to have two bottles which I did for a long time but now I just check them daily (now I’ve found some I trust!). If you do use a water bowl then ideally it’s best somewhere where it can’t get full of bedding or contaminated. Something I’m not sure is obvious in some of those kallax hacks - which you may have already thought of, regardless of what type of doors you have. And that is a piece of fixed Perspex onside the door area to keep the substrate in. Industrial Velcro is fine for attaching water bottles. I’ve tried bottle stands but gave up on them but you might be better at making them than me. There is a toilet roll tube one. Quite simple. The one I made was quite stable but not perfect. You cut the top off a 500ml spring water bottle. Fill the base with stones (I used some nice polished ones stepson got in holiday - technically crystals. And make a hole for the spout just above the stones. The bottle just sits inside the bottle with the spout through the hole which holds it in place. However it was a fiddle making a hole in the bottle without having any sharp edges of plastic and I found sometimes the bottle didn’t sit upright enough so I was forever checking it. Height if the hole depends on species of hamster.