fire salamander vivs with fans

[benw]

I thought i would post the a few photos of my reworked vivs for my Fire salamanders.
There are 5 seperate vivs in the unit and each one has 5 50mm diameter guazed air vents, but i felt the air was still getting stale in the units, with the sals health very much in mind i decided to fit some fans in them. I bought some Lucky Reptile fan units, the main kit is a tranformer and 2 fans, with a provision on the transformer for a further 2 fans. Each fan has a built in temperature contol which speeds the fan up the warmer it gets, an extracts the warm air from the viv.

I removed one of the rear gauzes from each of the vivs and screwed a fan in place, because there was a small gap i filled it with silicone.

They seemed to work well so far, all the condensation has gone off the glass now. The fans are on a timer which come on for 15 minutes every hour.

The fan spec for size reference is 60 mm x 60mm x 25mm.


Thanks for taking an interest, and, as always comments welcome.

Ben

 

[dane_zu]

what did you seal the particle board with?

 

[benw]

The particle board was sealed with a yacht type varnish, about 6 coats in total, but this was about 10 years ago when the units were originally made, i thought about re- sealing before the fire salamanders went in, but i decided that i would only hold the process back, and i may possibly end up with new varnish with possible toxins in for the salamanders to absorb.

My thinking was that the old varnish was on thick enough and was old enough it would be ok, so the unit was washed out- it had previously housed Leopard Geckos- with Veta Sept, several times, then was ready to go.

The Fire Salamanders had been in for several weeks, but as i originally said, i was unhappy with the air flow, so the fans went in, and so far its worked out great, its still moist in the vivs, but very little condensation on the glass.

Hope that hepls

Ben