Agree with Shannon. I have the same size cage for our Syrian and everything is a bit of a squeeze. The Barney or Alexander are a better size for a Syrian and both will fit an 11" wheel much easier. I had one of the platforms from the Hamster Heaven and ended up taking it out - the little pod house wasn't big enough for our Syrian (who grew to be very large!), plus it has a kind of bump in the middle and everything kept rolling off it (including wee!). Our Hamster Charlie also decided the inset yellow food bowl was a toilet - because it was in a corner opposite the pod house (bad design there!), hence the wee rolling down the platform. And then the plastic ladder broke - so I binned the whole platform ha ha. The tubes can cause issues for people too - larger Syrians can get stuck in them and they are an escape risk, plus Hamsters sometimes block them up. I prefer tubes to be toys inside a cage now, rather than going on the outside of the cage and rat sized toys are best for Syrians - hence a bigger cage being better to fit the bigger stuff in and still have floorspace. Having said that, it's a nice cage with a nice big front door, if you get rid of all the plastic bits that come with it, but look nice but soon become problematic. My cage is the Savic Mickey 2XL which is identical except for smaller bar spacing and without the tubes and contents and I thought it seemed really big when I got it but because the base slopes in at the bottom, like most cages, it just doesn't seem quite big enough inside, especially with a large wheel in, which takes over a lot of the floor space.
Photo of mine below - same size as the Hamster Heaven - same cage basically but smaller bar spacing.
I just wish I had bought a 100cm cage to start with as now I need to upgrade to a bigger cage. 100cm cage will sit on top of most chests of drawers eg so there are ways of fitting one in! I ended up rearranging our living room to fit an 80cm cage in and by the time I had moved a piece of furniture upstairs and bought a cheap shelving unit to save floor space, I found I could have fitted 100cm cage!
I think the Barney is a good buy at under £50. It has a good sized house in it for a Syrian to make a nest. It maybe doesn't look as much fun and colourful as the Hamster Heaven but with a few Hamster accessories you can make it look fun and individualise it and choose toys that suit your Hamster. I reckon a 10cm cardboard tube is one of the best toys you can get them! Plus really deep substrate/litter on the base so they can dig their own tunnels. I have one of the 10cm tubes tied to the roof of our cage, leading from his rat sized sputnik to the flat roof of the house.
I actually really like Savic Mickey 2XL cage - no door on top so you can use all the roof space for hanging things, and a nice big front door like the Hamster Heaven. I prefer it to the Hamster Heaven because there are no tube holes to have to block off. I just wish it was bigger and a little bit higher. The height is quite low inside - about 36 to 37cm (the 50cm quoted for the Hamster Heaven includes the height with the Penthouse on top) which means it's difficult to fit an 11" wheel in and still have substrate depth - my substrate is sloped up away from it at quite an angle which isn't ideal. On the other hand it means falls are less of an issue.
I think most people would like a Barney with a big door on the front like the Hamster Heaven, but at the end of the day the Barney is also a really good cage and a much better size for a Syrian hamster. In Germany 100cm is the minimum recommended size for a Syrian.
Barney Pet Cage | Great deals at zooplus!
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Hamster Heaven Cage?
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