Dragonemperess
New member
Today, after my class, I was determined. I was gonna go out and start the process of getting my little baby girl a bigger tank by getting something bigger to put her future bigger home on. As you can tell, it didn’t go so well. I wound up in quite a bit of agony for nothing. Sort of suspecting scoliosis at this point.
We are currently in a bit of a pickle with our finances. My dad has been laid off a bit back and is having trouble finding a job since he isn’t well adapted to the new age, and I have various health issues that make getting a job not very viable for me, no matter how much I wish otherwise. Still working on a degree to negate that, but its gonna be a while. At least I have an income to help out with, even if it isn’t much. Then to top it off, [COLOR=“#B22222”]there isn’t much space in the bedroom for a table, so I don’t have many options. 34x20 is about as much as it can get before I have trouble getting out of the bed[/COLOR]. I don’t mind too much though, I’m quite adaptive. But Sahyuvonnos definitely needs a bigger tank than her tiny 10 gallon. I can’t stand her not having as much room as the geckos at the vivarium to ignore the existence of and stay in her humid hide with. A good lesson in life, sometimes love isn’t enough, despite what some would say. I try to play with her whenever she gets restless, but she at the point where she is sort of annoyed at me. I even got her a cat toy to roll around. She didn’t care at all. :-? Must have had something to do with me accidentally rolling it into her face. Maybe I should put the toilet paper roll in there again. She loved that. :idea:
After a trip for some d3 calcium at Petco (may need to make a post about that too...) I went to Ikea. That place is a maze even with the map. And my physical condition didn’t help one bit. But I pushed on with determination. I just wanted an affordable surface to put Sahyu’s future epic tank on, was that so much to ask?
Apparently it was.
I had my heart set on a table that would fit either a exo terra med low or a plain 20 long aquarium. But when I FINALLY found the table, I didn’t like that it wobbled a bit. I asked a lady that worked there about a suitable table to put a terrarium on, she warned me about the hollow make or something like that. I don’t remember, but she was worried about the table cracking and terrible things happening. So after more than a bit of wandering about and having the terrible realization that I’m too poor right now for even Ikea when it comes to somewhat sturdy furniture, a lady told me about the “as is" section.
I hoped that there was something there. There was. Sort of. In the back they had table tops. But a man told me about the table top that I found being weak and as such could easily crack. So I thought Home Depot must surely have sturdy wood. So I went to Home Depot in search of good wood. At this point I was in agony, but I was filled with determination that Sahyu would have an awesome enclosure to sleep and stare creepily at me in.
Unfortunately I came to the realization that I need a way to get my purchases home if I found anything. I’m not the brightest bulb in the world when it comes to living in general, so I should have realized that I was in no condition to get anything home. I guess I was thinking I could carry it on my head like I did something else when I was younger. Home Depot had big shopping basket, but I have to be careful with my money. I could hear Dad in the back of my head telling me off for buying it. Gonna have to go to China Town and get one eventually and donate my smaller one.
But I have somewhat good news. I eventually found the shelves. They are definitely strong and long enough at 12” x 36”. My plan is to get two of them to form the table top. The “legs” are where the plan falls apart. I planned on using milk crates to be the “legs” of the table. My train of though is that since I used to use milk crates as a bed when I was little, that they should be good enough as a table. Luckily I tried it out at the store. The crates and the board could be separated too easily if nudged or knocked. I am a person that almost literally trips on her own shadow, so that isn’t a good idea. But later on, I thought of using the twine I got outside Ikea to tie the boards somewhat to the milk crates so that they couldn’t separate.
At that point, I realized that I should retreat and strategize. But I need help since the obvious tends to evade me. Better to have multiple brains than one for information gathering. Thats why I came here. You are all way more experienced than I am, after all. Google doesn’t hold all of the answers. I have a few ideas. But lesson learned, I should get a large shopping basket.
1. My original milk crate/shelf plan, making sure to twine the milk crates together into immobility like a spider. Then to twine the shelves to the milk crate table. Maybe only on the part that wont have the heat mat above it.
2. Replace milk crates with a large storage tote or two tall ones to support each end. That way I can even cut a hole in the side and store stuff in them. Not sure about how the storage totes would handle heat mat, though. And they would have the same issue as the milk crate, without holes to twine them together.
3. Get shelves by themselves and put them and the tank on the ground. Too bad about my clumsiness. And will that cause the carpet to get hot through the wood? The carpet is really old and pretty bad. No amount of carpet shampooing is gonna help that poor thing.
4. Get a large basket this month and hope with all of my heart that something else doesn’t come up financially to screw us over even further *knock on wood*. Then get an actual stand or something solidly built and then hopefully the tank next month.
5. I am open to any other suggestions except giving Sahyu up (she is pretty much my anchor to living, sort of like an unofficial therapy pet, and what if she winds up with a bad person) or delivery (Very paranoid about strangers (never even answer the door), quality of product (empty box, anyone?), identity theft, and other potential problems that come with buying things from online. Heck, I only use cash to buy stuff and use gift cards for any digital transactions.) I know its not the best way to live, but i’ve been burned too many time before.
Don’t suggest I make my own. My tremors and general clumsiness means that my fingers/toes and the hammer would get very acquainted. Regardless, I am gonna need to recover for quite a while from this adventure. But I learned quite a bit.
We are currently in a bit of a pickle with our finances. My dad has been laid off a bit back and is having trouble finding a job since he isn’t well adapted to the new age, and I have various health issues that make getting a job not very viable for me, no matter how much I wish otherwise. Still working on a degree to negate that, but its gonna be a while. At least I have an income to help out with, even if it isn’t much. Then to top it off, [COLOR=“#B22222”]there isn’t much space in the bedroom for a table, so I don’t have many options. 34x20 is about as much as it can get before I have trouble getting out of the bed[/COLOR]. I don’t mind too much though, I’m quite adaptive. But Sahyuvonnos definitely needs a bigger tank than her tiny 10 gallon. I can’t stand her not having as much room as the geckos at the vivarium to ignore the existence of and stay in her humid hide with. A good lesson in life, sometimes love isn’t enough, despite what some would say. I try to play with her whenever she gets restless, but she at the point where she is sort of annoyed at me. I even got her a cat toy to roll around. She didn’t care at all. :-? Must have had something to do with me accidentally rolling it into her face. Maybe I should put the toilet paper roll in there again. She loved that. :idea:
After a trip for some d3 calcium at Petco (may need to make a post about that too...) I went to Ikea. That place is a maze even with the map. And my physical condition didn’t help one bit. But I pushed on with determination. I just wanted an affordable surface to put Sahyu’s future epic tank on, was that so much to ask?
Apparently it was.
I had my heart set on a table that would fit either a exo terra med low or a plain 20 long aquarium. But when I FINALLY found the table, I didn’t like that it wobbled a bit. I asked a lady that worked there about a suitable table to put a terrarium on, she warned me about the hollow make or something like that. I don’t remember, but she was worried about the table cracking and terrible things happening. So after more than a bit of wandering about and having the terrible realization that I’m too poor right now for even Ikea when it comes to somewhat sturdy furniture, a lady told me about the “as is" section.
I hoped that there was something there. There was. Sort of. In the back they had table tops. But a man told me about the table top that I found being weak and as such could easily crack. So I thought Home Depot must surely have sturdy wood. So I went to Home Depot in search of good wood. At this point I was in agony, but I was filled with determination that Sahyu would have an awesome enclosure to sleep and stare creepily at me in.
Unfortunately I came to the realization that I need a way to get my purchases home if I found anything. I’m not the brightest bulb in the world when it comes to living in general, so I should have realized that I was in no condition to get anything home. I guess I was thinking I could carry it on my head like I did something else when I was younger. Home Depot had big shopping basket, but I have to be careful with my money. I could hear Dad in the back of my head telling me off for buying it. Gonna have to go to China Town and get one eventually and donate my smaller one.
But I have somewhat good news. I eventually found the shelves. They are definitely strong and long enough at 12” x 36”. My plan is to get two of them to form the table top. The “legs” are where the plan falls apart. I planned on using milk crates to be the “legs” of the table. My train of though is that since I used to use milk crates as a bed when I was little, that they should be good enough as a table. Luckily I tried it out at the store. The crates and the board could be separated too easily if nudged or knocked. I am a person that almost literally trips on her own shadow, so that isn’t a good idea. But later on, I thought of using the twine I got outside Ikea to tie the boards somewhat to the milk crates so that they couldn’t separate.
At that point, I realized that I should retreat and strategize. But I need help since the obvious tends to evade me. Better to have multiple brains than one for information gathering. Thats why I came here. You are all way more experienced than I am, after all. Google doesn’t hold all of the answers. I have a few ideas. But lesson learned, I should get a large shopping basket.
1. My original milk crate/shelf plan, making sure to twine the milk crates together into immobility like a spider. Then to twine the shelves to the milk crate table. Maybe only on the part that wont have the heat mat above it.
2. Replace milk crates with a large storage tote or two tall ones to support each end. That way I can even cut a hole in the side and store stuff in them. Not sure about how the storage totes would handle heat mat, though. And they would have the same issue as the milk crate, without holes to twine them together.
3. Get shelves by themselves and put them and the tank on the ground. Too bad about my clumsiness. And will that cause the carpet to get hot through the wood? The carpet is really old and pretty bad. No amount of carpet shampooing is gonna help that poor thing.
4. Get a large basket this month and hope with all of my heart that something else doesn’t come up financially to screw us over even further *knock on wood*. Then get an actual stand or something solidly built and then hopefully the tank next month.
5. I am open to any other suggestions except giving Sahyu up (she is pretty much my anchor to living, sort of like an unofficial therapy pet, and what if she winds up with a bad person) or delivery (Very paranoid about strangers (never even answer the door), quality of product (empty box, anyone?), identity theft, and other potential problems that come with buying things from online. Heck, I only use cash to buy stuff and use gift cards for any digital transactions.) I know its not the best way to live, but i’ve been burned too many time before.
Don’t suggest I make my own. My tremors and general clumsiness means that my fingers/toes and the hammer would get very acquainted. Regardless, I am gonna need to recover for quite a while from this adventure. But I learned quite a bit.
