What is your take on store bought or homeade dyi reptile decorations? It seems that the safety of the animal is not always taken into consideration regardless of choice. Ultimately I feel the homemade decorations and the materials / chemicals used are at the owners risk and discretion and everyone will have certain opinion on what is best or not. But the store bought “main line” items either from the big box pet stores or from one of the larger manufacturers of reptile items, should be held accountable for what they’re selling. I feel that a lot of things are of poor quality and are either just not good or harmful to our pets. Speaking from my own expiences I’ve had reptile vine with a large amount of exposed wire ends, Sharp edges on almost any hollow decoration or hide on the shelf, A basking spot which colors bled with water and more so after being under heat. I see half log hides that don’t list the type of wood they are. Plastics leaves glued and stapled to logs. Unsure of what material something is when it says not to wash. It would be nice to see some more quality items on the market and in the stores. Even though the reptiles could care less if they’re in a tupperware hide or a fancy overpriced rock lair.
If done correctly I think people should just make their own decorations and hides if possible just because hides online or in pet stores are ridiculously overpriced. A little wooden hide is like almost 15 bucks at my local pet store which just doesn’t make sense to buy when I could make my own hid that are cheaper to make and even bigger than the one in store. I know that @thecrawdfather make a great post on how he makes his own hides and he even shows how to make them safer for reptiles by melting the sharp edges and things like that.
Yeah. A couple of my girls barely use them anymore but they’re still in there! They’re just getting pretty big.
One of mine is using her fancy cave as a restroom, which works. Just pull it out and clean it up. But it’s the cave of horrors.
