Habitat - Indoor :: Basking ramp out of just eggcrate?

[VanishingReality]

So I finally got my 55 gallon tank on sunday so that means I am in need of a new basking ramp.

My little guy has a thing for knocking off suction cups so they are out of the question, he can even get the stealth ones off. He also is a sissy and refuses a ATBA. Since I was getting eggcrate for the lid I was thinking of using the rest to create a ramp.

I have a few questions though,

What do I use to glue the pieces together?

Can I use just eggcrate or does he need a bottom. He likes to well, bit at everything so I assumed just eggcrate would be the safest.

Also if anyone has an eggcrate ramp, pictures or what you did would be great. I am horrible at building this kind of stuff but I do love my little guy.

[SabrinaF]

We just melted our eggcrate to our ATBA.

[BullDog]

To glue them together, you can use either aquarium silicone, or if no part of it will be in the water, a hot glue gun. I've attached the ramps to my atbas with silicone, hot glue, and finally zip ties. I think all that's holding them on now is the zip ties.

Not sure what you mean by a bottle?

Here's a couple pics of one of mine:

Siliconing together:


Cut to fit:


I support the ramp on one side with vinyl tubing tied to the outside wall of the basking area, since Frankie is a hefty gal, and bit through the string and fishing line that I tried first



On Frankie's tank, I used a basket for the outside walls, and on Ralph's I used scraps of egg crate.
Frankie's:


Ralph's:

[VanishingReality]

To glue them together, you can use either aquarium silicone, or if no part of it will be in the water, a hot glue gun. I've attached the ramps to my atbas with silicone, hot glue, and finally zip ties. I think all that's holding them on now is the zip ties.

Not sure what you mean by a bottle?

That was supposed to be bottom. Apparently I cannot type with my finger sprained.

I am just worried since it has to be in the tank for him to use it that will not be able to support his weight. He is sort of on the small size but tends to try to break things. He has actually tried to stack rocks on his ramp for the fun of it.

I was thinking of gluing it to the egg crate that is the roof (egg crate) but I am not sure if it will break. He has broken countless ramps but either bashing them with rocks or breaking suction cups.

Then at night he always wants to sleep on his ramp that he breaks.

[BullDog]

I used a piece of plexiglass under the egg crate on the bottom of mine. Frankie is a big girl, and the egg crate started to crack down the middle after a couple weeks. Since I put the plexi, there's been no problems. Egg crate is pretty hard for them to break by biting, so I think it'd be OK in that respect. It's also a little bit flexible, so it can bend a bit without breaking.

[atagtmeier]

My girlfriend asked me to tell you how we did out basking area. I used the egg crate. Each egg crate I found has a different size squares. So I measured and used a wire cutter to cut the egg crate to the size I wanted. Then I used a soldering iron to melt it together. If you cut just the one side of the egg crate, so that each square ends up making a "U". You end up with a "three sided square and makes it easy to melt each piece together. I used the point of the soldering iron to melt a hole into the plastic pieces that touched to get then to melt together. Some pieces I also just rubbed the iron over them to melt them. I dont know how to better explain it but it turned out really solid. Would take a lot of force to break it. I tried breaking the solder on a scratch piece and it ended up shattering everywhere but where I melted the pieces together. I hope this makes sense to you, hard for me to explain. I will send you a PM of my cell number. You can text me if you got a cell, and if you can recieve multimedia messages I can maybe make a little video showing you what I did and text it to you. Otherwise more than welcome to call me and I can help.