radstusky
Avid Member
I've always hated large and ugly pots inside the cage, they take up a lot of room and just don't seem natural to me. So I came up with this solution for my Jackson's cage. It's similar to what I did with my panther's cage too. Check it out and I'd love to know what you guys think! (I'm trying photobucket here for the first time so bear with me...)
Here's the before picture of the cage:
Cage dimensions are 18x18x36 and as you can see about 10" of the bottom are taken up by the pots.
I designed and my friend built this:
Here it is with a sterlite container inside. Ideally I would have used a square container, but this was the only one I could find that would fit inside the cage.
Here it is with some rocks in the bottom and a screen, and drainage:
So the idea is that this container acts as a planter and I plant all the plants in here and place the screen cage on top, like so:
drainage looked like this underneath:
In this cage, I had a new ficus, but it wasn't very tall, and as you can see, there is a lot of empty space at the top of the cage. The ideal plant size would be one about 2.5 feet high, but I couldn't find one exactly that height.
So I went back to HD and bought a new ficus, it was slightly more than 3 feet high and I trimmed it back quite a bit. I replanted everything:
That's what it looked like before putting the cage on. I guess it'd make a nice free range!
Here it is with the cage on top:
So as you can see, I've essentially made my cage about 10" taller! Here's a picture of the inhabitant (Drake):
I hope he likes it! I still plan to add some rocks on top of the sand that is on top of the soil. I forgot to buy another bag while at HD. I may also have to add a grow light, with all that foliage, the plants on the bottom may not have enough light. Over-watering might also be a problem, but it hasn't been so far with my panther's cage, but we'll see. I may need to put some cups or something down there to catch some of the water.
What do you think?
Here's the before picture of the cage:
Cage dimensions are 18x18x36 and as you can see about 10" of the bottom are taken up by the pots.
I designed and my friend built this:
Here it is with a sterlite container inside. Ideally I would have used a square container, but this was the only one I could find that would fit inside the cage.
Here it is with some rocks in the bottom and a screen, and drainage:
So the idea is that this container acts as a planter and I plant all the plants in here and place the screen cage on top, like so:
drainage looked like this underneath:
In this cage, I had a new ficus, but it wasn't very tall, and as you can see, there is a lot of empty space at the top of the cage. The ideal plant size would be one about 2.5 feet high, but I couldn't find one exactly that height.
So I went back to HD and bought a new ficus, it was slightly more than 3 feet high and I trimmed it back quite a bit. I replanted everything:
That's what it looked like before putting the cage on. I guess it'd make a nice free range!
Here it is with the cage on top:
So as you can see, I've essentially made my cage about 10" taller! Here's a picture of the inhabitant (Drake):
I hope he likes it! I still plan to add some rocks on top of the sand that is on top of the soil. I forgot to buy another bag while at HD. I may also have to add a grow light, with all that foliage, the plants on the bottom may not have enough light. Over-watering might also be a problem, but it hasn't been so far with my panther's cage, but we'll see. I may need to put some cups or something down there to catch some of the water.
What do you think?
