Yes, of course. You can use one of the plastic shelves that comes with it, Trixie corner shelves, degus and wooden shelves, free standing platforms etc. The big front door plus a top door makes setting up easy. Here's one of my set ups for a dwarf to show you what i mean.
Yes, of course. You can use one of the plastic shelves that comes with it, Trixie corner shelves, degus and wooden shelves, free standing platforms etc. The big front door plus a top door makes setting up easy. Here's one of my set ups for a dwarf to show you what i mean.
I wasn't keen on the Hamster Heaven plastic shelves - they were fiddly to fix and the solid one had a weird slope on it. Which the pee used to run down!
When I used that cage, instead of a shelf, I got a large flat roofed house - the house roof doubled as a shelf and over each side of it (where there were gaps as the house wasn't as wide as the cage) I put a smaller shelf at each side. You have all sorts of choice in small wood shelves etc on Amazon.
I have a photo of how it was set up but at that point I only had a smaller shelf over it at the back, which you can hardly see on the photo, not at the front/right. It was one of the lava ledges. I also later removed the long bendy bridge as the hamster didn't like it as it wobbled (and it also broke pretty quickly!).
I then later added this roof tube - leading from the flat roof to the sputnik - it meant the hamster started using the sputnik and used to hang out in it If you put some bedding in it.
This is when I first had the cage and had the solid shelf on the right, so you can see how big it is. It took up too much space with the ladder as well - a house wouldn't fit under it. It also had this stupid little inset yellow plastic food pot in one corner which our hamster decided was a toilet, not a food bowl - because it was in a corner! And used to flip the pot out and pee up there (hence the pee running down the shelf and down the ladder!) As you can see in the photo I tried putting the corner litter tray over the pot in that corner. That didn't work. The hamster just used to move the potty and still pee in the pot underneath! And then, when the sloping shelf was covered in pee, he'd end up aquaplaning down the shelf sitting in the potty! Literally he aquaplaned down it!. The shelf isn't flat. The little pod houses attached to the shelf are no good either. They are removable though. Hamsters like them and try and nest in them but they're not big enough and get stinky inside. Plus the top pops off when they stuff too much nesting material inside. I hated that shelf! I think it's about 30 to 35cm each side.
Eventually, when the ladder broke, I got rid of the shelf and was much happier starting with an empty cage from scratch and using the flat roofed house and small shelves.
Note that hanging ladder isn't safe - that was the first thing that got removed!
This was my first hamster set up in that cage. Which evolved gradually to something much better as I got to know about hamsters. I can tell you what's wrong with that set up! Firstly the hanging ladder isn't safe (and has chains). Secondly the wood house is too small. As a result it was ignored and never used. It wouldn't fit under the shelf either. Thirdly, they can't get in and out of the sputnik to use it - unless it's next to a shelf or has a tube leading into it. The ladder from the shelf takes up all the floor space on the right hand side (so the shelf and ladder together use up the space on that side). I could just squeeze the little red bench in there but it was in the way of the ladder access to some degree.
Actually I have an old video of that set up It shows the little shelf at the back. Note to Ria if you watch this - it was made before my first major moth outbreak! Hence I was mentioning 48 hours in the freezer (rather than a week) and didn't know about freezing food then. Although it's the Savic Mickey 2XL, it's exactly the same cage but with smaller bar spacing. The little lava ledge shelf just filled the gap between the house and the edge of the cage and he loved sitting under it.
Re: Hamster who bites
If you put some bedding in it.
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