New saucer....help me set up this FN please?!

[Donna]

Ok....so im super new to this. I plunged in head first and am trying to do it right. If you are curious as to how I started please see my intro

I purchased a flying saucer and got it mounted. My mounting options seemed limited to a place where the bars crossed, but i am not confident that i havr this set up correctly. Would ypu move the large shelf? What about the corner wood shelf? Im afraid they dont have enough room to stay safe.

Ive blocked them into the top portion untill im confident this is set up correctly! And , the cage looks like a mess but I cleaned it last night! I know alot of people remove the plastic shelves altogether and replace with wooden shelves; that is a project I will be taking in as soon as I can find a couple hours to work on it. Untill then, any sugfestions or advice is super welcomed.

Thanks,

Donna

 

[Godofgods]

Oh it only takes a very short time for them to make a mess of everything, get used to that' lol

You are limited to cross bars, but you might want to move it down one. Some times they will jump on and off fast and repeatedly.

While i imagine wooden trays could work, i think it might be a bad idea. They are likely going to poop and pee on it. Once that pee is in the wood, its not easy to get out. I learned that the hard way after trying to make a wooden hay container thing for my girls. They peed all over it and i had to through it out. All that work and it didn't even last a day. - Thats probably one reason so many use the metal Bass Pans.

You can arrange and style thing how ever you like of course, but ill post a pic to show you one of my cages, and why i did a few things.

--

That is my boys cage. It has the same wheel and those metal Bass Pans. The pans are pretty nice. However i do have a sheet of fleece between the metal pan and the cage bars to reduce noise when they jump around. And there are wooden ledges around to make sure they can reach everything without a problem. And they are good to chew on too.

(Since the first pic didn't show the wheel too well.)
Technically that my girls wheel, but the cages are set up the same. You can see its positioning from the outside on the first one. Initially i had it just a hair lower, but when i got the bass pans the metal support beam would lay right on the pan lip. Metal on metal with jumping and running chins is a loud process. So now the top support bar for the wheel is just a hair above the cross bar to make sure the bottom support does not touch the pan lip.

The second one you can see the wooden support for the wheel. I wasn't quite sure the type of wood that was in the support they sent me, so i used some extra pieces of poplar i had and used some dowels to connect them all. The top piece has a little indent to hold the wheel bar securely. It helps support the wheel and reduce the noise from the bars on the cage walls.

Any way, that's what i did. Good luck with setting yours up!

 

[3CsMommy]

I use ^ that method, but since my cage is tiled I'm able to stuff a piece of 1x6 and a piece of 2x4 under the support and it stays nice and still and nice and quiet since the cage is in my bedroom.

 

[Skyelar Shade]

I have a critter nation cage its the same as the fn just different bar spacing in the intro page I have a thread just scroll down and look for the name skyelar shade my last reply has a pic of my set up