Rotastak Small Pet Accessories
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Rotastak Small Pet Accessory Reviews
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Rotastak Maze
by loulou22 *** In The Begining *** I used to always have hamsters but sadly my last one died about 3 years ago. This hamster was called Lara and she was spoiled rotten with Rotastak Housing including the Maze Unit. *** Choosing The Right Home *** I knew from the moment I'd decided on a hamster that I wanted to have ... Rotastak housing. It was what I'd had when I was younger and it was fun for me and the hamster! Looking round all the rotastak available I decided to have the Jungle home (I won't go into detail on this as I will do a separate review on this). The Jungle comes complete with the maze area. This was the main thing which attracted me to the product. All Rotastak products come well packed complete with instructions. The maze system consists of: 1 basic house unit and base. This is a round unit which can be used as a living area alone, providing you don't have any accessories inside. Personally I wouldn't recommend this as the basic unit is quite small. This unit is made of a think strong plastic; it has some small bars round the top - which my hamster has taken to chewing in the middle of the night and waking me up with! The roof of this system is also thick plastic. The roof has a removable section so you can get to your hamster. It also has two other smaller removable lids which are removed if you want to connect any units or accessories on top of the unit. The unit comes with a removable base which simply fits into place underneath the main unit and is held securely in position with the supplied safety clips. 1 maze insert. The maze is a separate piece, which can be placed in the basic unit to create a fun and adventurous environment for your little hammie. The maze is made of a thick touch plastic which I would expect to withstand a fair bit of gnawing! The maze unit I have is green, however if you buy them separately they are a kind of see though grey. 2 standard tubes. The standard tubes are made of plastic and are approximately 3ins long and connect together very easily. The tubes are used to connect the different rotastak units together. 2 anti gnaw rings. The anti gnaw rings are round pieces of metal which fit onto the ends of the tubes to prevent the hamster gnawing through the plastic and possibly injuring itself. 2 safety clips. These have to be one of the most practical but at the same time quite fiddly and annoying things in this set. The safety clips are small silver clips, they are sort of a "G" shape and they hold the base of the main unit to the main unit itself. The only problem is they can be quite awarkward to fit. *** Getting Home and Setting Up *** On arrival home I quickly set the whole system up according to the instructions provided. However I found the maze was tricky to set up as the connecting tubes had to go where the holes are - obviously! So I had to position the maze insert very carefully to make sure I didn't move the pipes. Now as I said previously the base to all this is separate. This is where it got really stupid as I had to line up 3 different holes so the hamster could get through easily and the main thing...So the whole unit wouldn't fall apart! After a lot of messing and re-positioning I managed to get it all together and all that was left to do was fix the safety clips on and put my hamster inside. Sounds simple... Yeah right! To put the safety clips on you need to be able to access underneath the base as these clip on underneath and catch onto a small ridge on the bottom of the unit. This would be simple if you have no other units underneath. However I have the jungle base underneath and pipes connecting the two, so yet again I was left to battle with the pipes and maze as they all moved when I lifted the unit to insert the clips. * If you are thinking of buying this unit I would recommend you have it at the bottom of your stack unless you have a lot of patience or know what you are doing! It's Finally Complete! Finally after about an hour of trying to put the maze together it is complete and its time to put the hamster inside. As this was a new baby hamster I put it in the main living area first rather than the maze, however she soon found her way up to the maze and started her adventures! Hamsters Grow! For the first few weeks this was great and I enjoyed watching the hamster now known as Lara (after Lara Croft) running through the maze and finding the treats I left hidden around the maze. I gradually became an expert on all the fiddly bits of putting the whole maze unit back together after cleaning out, when I started to notice that Lara was having difficulty getting through the maze when she had stuffed her cheek pouches full of food. She could manage fine when they were empty but she had problems with them full. So as soon as I had finally mastered building the maze, I had to remove the maze insert completely as I didn't want to risk her getting stuck when I wasn't there! This might be a one off situation which involves me having a giant hamster, but she is only a standard Syrian hamster. *** Overall *** Overall I would say if you have the patience to put the maze together and you don't mind the risk of having to eventually remove it when your hamster grows then do buy the maze. It is great fun to watch and the hamster does seem to enjoy it while the fun lasts! However like all rotastak they are quite expensive for the "piece of plastic" you get! Rotastak can be used for other small animals such and Russian/dwarf hamsters and mice. If you have these animals then he maze would be fine for them as they do not grow as big as Syrian hamsters. (the pipes need special ladders if you have mice) As I said previously Rotastak can be quite expensive considering what you are getting for your money! The maze I got came as part of the Jungle set but you can also buy it separately as part of a basic unit or just the maze insert on its own. The prices of these are usually around: The Jungle set including maze £49.99 The Basic unit and maze combined £19.99 The maze insert alone £9.99 The basic unit alone £12.99 These prices are just a guide as they can vary by quite a lot depending on where about you shop! Hope you've enjoyed reading and if you do buy a maze I hope you and your little pet have loads of fun! Read the complete review |
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Rotastak Dreamland Small Animal Housing
by xxfoxyredxx I own 5 gorgeous hamsters....I simply adore them, dote on them and try to give them the very best of everything. Just recently owning 4 hamsters at the time I decided that I would breed a litter from my beautiful Maud and Trevor my Syrian hamsters. I wanted to keep the family tree kinda going and it seemed a fantastic idea at the time so ... I read up on it got everything I needed, mated them and 16 days later we were blessed with 11 beautiful babies. It was an exciting time but really traumatic for my girl Maud who ended up struggling big time as a single parent and although she did her best was really exhausted and struggling to feed them all. She'd be feeding them, washing them and they never left her alone even for a minute. Worried by the smaller looking and weaker babies I called a vet who advised me to intervene and help feed them and I ended up hourly feeding most of them for days. We we are exhausted including my fantastic mate Maz who lives downstairs who helped me out loads! However sadly we ended up losing 7 of them. They died one by one and our front garden became a mini graveyard. Maud was stressed out, we were and tired too but on a positive note we did end up with 4 healthy surviving hamsters to which friends had the three healthy girls (who were stunning by the way lol!) and I kept the one remaining boy, Englebert Humphrey who is the spit of his Dad much to my delight as I adore him lol! Because of all the troubles going on in Mauds home the cage she was in got battered and broken by us. We broke the lid and some of plastic top split but not only that I wanted after all that happened to treat her to a new, bright home. I ordered Englebert a cage and Maud and the one I went for for Maud was this Rotastak Dreamland home. Pink and with different levels I thought this was a great looking cage and at only £29.99 I thought that was a great price for a Rotastak cage which is known for quality (from Argos)! The Cage Itself: I absolutely hated putting this cage together. It took me and two other people actually to get this up and running and even then I went to put it on a table and the thing collapsed....robust this really isn't It comes in a bright pink box (obviously directed at little girls) with photographs of the cage all over it and pictures of castles and things like that and we are told that it is a 'Complete home for hamsters, gerbils and mice' and contact details for Rotastak are of course given. Inside the box there is numerous pieces which again feel rather flimsy and cheap and mainly plastic which I wasn't expecting from this range at all and an instruction sheet which shows you what to do via diagrams rather than the written word which is simply really confusing! Putting It Together: Like I say this took three people and a pair of spectacles to get it up! Lots of room on a floor and a calm attitude (we were all losing it) was really required. It took about an hour to get this put together right because the pieces are not colour coded so you have to guess which tube fits where and they are different colours and different materials and the likes and that is not explained on the instruction leaflet at all! What you get if the main home which is round. You get a light pink plastic base which slips on via two silver, metal clips which fasten that base on with the see through section which is quite tall and acts as a window section of the home. You have to be rather careful with these flexible clips because they can scratch the see through plastic easily Whig I did rather badly even before Maud got in. Above that the you get a section that clips in which is a purple lid with a slide to open pink plastic hatch which is wide enough to pop you hand in and get your pet out of etc however I find this to be really secure and sometimes I can't open it as I'm not strong enough which is a right nuisance! Below the lid there are shiny silver bars which are small which act as hair holes. This bit isn't hard to put together at all however its the rest! The bright fuchsia pink see through wheel patterned with a star shape engraved into the outside and this fastens simply onto the side of the main unit via a piece of tubing. I find this to be secure however my Syrian is to big for this and can't actually use it! To the top of the unit is where tubes and other units fit to. You get a look out tower which fits into see-though tubing giving you a round plastic look out tower of a decent size though it does wobble it hasn't fell apart yet and then there is another hole to which you have to fit a variety of different coloured tubes which clasp together with a plastic rings and go into a tall bridge shape and into an oblong and tallish unit which holds a small bottle to the end of it. The oblong unit is purple plastic with a bright fluorescent pink top section and it also has a light pink hatch to that and purple handle which acts as a carrying case should you need it. The bung there is at the bottom of the main section of the round housing and can be used to fill up the hole if taking it out from the tubing making this a handy little extra. However the bottle supplied is really tiny! It secures into place and is fitted and there is no where else to pop through a more standard sized bottle at all so poor Mauds has to be kept being refilled! It comes with a round grey bowl which takes up rather alot of living area really and thats it! Now this looks nice enough with pink, purple and even fluorescent areas although they don't glow in the dark oddly enough. However I think this is terrible! The living area for a grown rodent is far too small, the fact the bottle is tiny is awkward too as I have to remember to fill it and I would prefer this to be nearer my pets food to which it isn't and I struggle to find room to make her a bed up and I can't put any toys in it at all. She is really enclosed and looks almost squeezed into here. The tubes although not thin exactly are a rather tight fit for my big girl and I'm not happy that if I touch it it seems to fall apart. Its a pain to take apart to clean it too as there are so many pieces and I hate the way the tubing is put together! The tubes slot together through click into place rings but a few pieces need silver rings slotted inside of the tubing which is really hard and fiddly to do so and in fact one ring I couldn't get in for love nor money so I'm left with a spare piece and the joint where the carry case section goes in is wonky, doesn't lay flat on my table and is now tied up with some cloth to make sure Maud doesn't escape! (which has worked so far but does look tatty!) All in all I am not pleased with this one bit. It looks ok but once again Maud needs a new cage as this is more like a starter kit that anything a grown hamster should be subjected to living in and I feel cruel not good about this purchase though I did it with the best of intentions! This is aimed at children which doesn't seem fair to me its the pets health and well being that counts not whats visually important to some little girl. I got this because I thought it was pretty and interesting for Maud and within my budget and didn't believe it would be so small and nope this one isn't for me or Maud! Available in all good pet shops, Argos and from online stores such as Amazon at just under £30.00. Read the complete review |
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Rotastak Cages
by Squeeg I have been looking for a new cage for my Syrian hamster, Noodle, as she had been living in a more traditional barred cage and spent most of her time gnawing on the bars. This was not only very annoying for me (I live in a shared flat and so Noodle shares my room and would wake me up most nights), it could also lead to damaged teeth for ... her. I decided the best thing to do would be to change to a plastic cage, where she could not make so much noise or do herself any damage. I was drawn immediately to Rotastak cages due to the possibility for expansion, if you're one for spoiling your pets, this is a great option. I settled on the Space Command model as it looked to be one of the more intricate cages and although this does mean that unfortunately it takes a fair while to clean it IS more fun for the hamster. It features four compartments (a large main section, a first floor with wheel, a second floor 'lookout' and a carry case which can be used to house the hamster while cleaning) and there is a large S shaped tube around the outside, and a number of inner tubes to connect the compartments. Hamsters love these tubes as they simulate the tunnels they build in the wild. My first stop in looking to buy the cage was Pets at Home, however I found that they were selling this particular model for £49 and I managed to find it £20 cheaper online, so wouldn't recommend going with the first price you see. When the cage arrived at my house around three days after I ordered it from Pet Planet, I was left alone to put it up. This is my main complaint with the cage, the instructions are atrocious. It took me over three hours to assemble. Some of the sections become quite hard to access once they have been put together and if you forget say, an anti-gnaw ring on the first floor then they lookout tower and S tube both have to be removed before you can get access to it. However, once I had gotten used to how all the parts should go together, taking it apart and putting it back together after cleaning did not take nearly so much time. I would suggest that someone with quite nimble fingers be enlisted to help put this cage together as some of the parts (the tubes) can be a little fiddly I have heard extremely devoted hamster lovers claim that the lack of corners in the Space Command cage is something that hamsters will miss (though mine certainly does not seem to, and she came from a regular rectangular shaped cage before) and that it can be poorly ventilated (once more I do not agree, there are air holes throughout the tubes and the tops of all compartments are fitted with generous slits). Another drawback I have read on forums would be that some believe it to be too small for a Syrian and the vertical tubes too difficult for dwarfs. My Syrian is rather tubby and manages all the tubes quite easily (the tightest part) and I believe 'mouse ladders' can be purchased separately to make vertical tubes easier for smaller critters. Unlike other cages I have had the wheel runs surprisingly quietly, although my hamster has developed an annoying habit of trying to store food in there and then run across it so it clatters noisily in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, when she does run with food in there smaller pieces of seeds and such can slip through the ventilation holes and get scattered around. It comes with two food bowls, a large-ish one for the main, lower compartment where I feed noodle all her dry food and an accesible draw in the 'lookout' where I choose to slide in her treats (as this draw is quite small). The only drawback on feeding I have noticed is that the water bottle is quite small. Overall, I would reccommend this cage, there are a few flaws that some may get frustrated by, but my hamster seems to really enjoy it far more than her old coop. And being able to see what she's doing inside makes it fascinating to watch her potter about having fun. Read the complete review |
Rotastak Small Pet Accessory |
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3 reviews Manufacturer: Rotastak / Small Pet Accessory / Type: Rodent & Small Pet Cages, Hutches & Runs |
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3 reviews Manufacturer: Rotastak / Small Pet Accessory / Type: Rodent & Small Pet Cages, Hutches & Runs |
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1 review Brand: Rotastak / Small Pet Accessory / Animals Equipment Type: Rodents / Small Pets |
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4 reviews Brand: Rotastak / Small Pet Accessory / Animals Equipment Type: Rodents / Small Pets |
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Brand: Rotastak / Small Pet Accessory / Type: Drinking bottle for small animals |
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Brand: Rotastak / Small Pet Accessory / Type: Hamster cage |
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| Rotastak Small Pet Accessory Recommendations 1 2 back | ||
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