Zen habitats 120 gallon tank9/2/2023 ![]() My guess is Zen Habitats will eventually offer a tempered glass door option like they do for the 4’x2’x2′ enclosure. I don’t see how this design is going to stand up over time with the selection of Acrylic as the door material. You are likely also considering larger animals based on the dimensions. When you are getting in the range of a 4’x2’x4′ PVC enclosure, you are targeting high humidity environments (paying for PVC) where acrylic will warp. The new gap with the glass doors was less than 1/8 inch and stable. The UHMW tape was necessary to ensure the much heavier doors still slid from side to side with ease. This allowed me to rotate the glass doors and use them as either left or right panels. I applied UHMW tape to the horizontal edges of the doors as well as adhesive pulls, centered. Funny story – at pickup, they brought out two doors – one had shattered as they were trying to bring it out to the car. You may not think that is significant, but if you are housing arboreal monitor lizards with prehensile tails that can hang from a branch and utilize all four limbs to solve a problem, you would be worried too.Īfter that gap test I immediately called the local glass shop and ordered three replacement doors. If I applied slight pressure on the middle of the rear door, I could expand the opening to 3/4 of an inch. The resting gap in my doors was 1/4 of an inch. Within a few days of having the vivarium fully operational, I noticed the gap in the acrylic doors was significant. So the bamboo print was not aesthetically pleasing to me, but that’s nothing some contact paper and a little bit of time cannot fix. ![]() Low on the list, but I don’t like bamboo.I did drill the material in several areas to add bulkheads, so we will see how it holds up over time. I’m not sure what the core material is, or how waterproof it is. The PVC panels appear to be two thin layers of PVC sandwiching some kind of alternate material.If you are buying one of these larger enclosures, just plan on spending another $150 on your own to replace the doors. ![]() I replaced them with tempered glass from the local shop, and didn’t look back. I knew this going in, but figured I’d get my own glass cut at some point to replace the stock acrylic. The 4’x2’x4′ Zen Habitat system does not have the option for glass doors. The biggest flaw for me are the stock acrylic doors.The not so good in order from most concern to least concern: I find the dimensions of the doors and dam visually pleasing.The top screen seems to be quite rugged, and has already withstood some good abuse from one of our exuberant monitors that enjoys using the screen as another path to transit across the viv, upside-down.Mine require 70% RH, so I could setup the viv to support that. I appreciate they included the screen dam alternative and the full screen top for other keepers that are housing arid species. For me, this was the extra acrylic cover to trap humidity, and the clear front 6″ dam. Extra key parts that allow you to customize the build to your critter are included.A rubber mallet is a must, as well as padding or a moving blanket to protect the frame as you assemble it. This viv, with it’s solid aluminum frame was easy to move, and I was confident we were not going to break anything. My 120 gallon glass vivarium was a bear to move, and given it’s fragility, quite nerve-wracking. It is much nicer than working with all-glass vivs. It’s light! The weight of the unit (or lack of weight) is really impressive.The aluminum frame is sturdy, and the rail system is high quality.After adding up a potential material list and calculating my time requirements, I decided to invest in a set of Zen Habitat enclosures for this build. I thought I would need to reinforce my build with some kind of metal frame, which would add to the complexity of the build and the cost. I did consider building my own PVC enclosure, but when I started sourcing materials, and given the target dimensions, I was a bit concerned about bowing and the quality of the bond I would get working with a new material. The system seemed intriguing, and though they didn’t have a kit with a full 6′ height requirement, I could stack two enclosures and combine them into a single one that fit my dimensional requirements. We stumbled across Zen Habitats and started reading reviews and watching videos. ![]() We looked at a variety of enclosures, but most of the custom built PVC vendors had very long lead times of 6 months or more, or their online reputations were a bit sketchy. We had been looking for an enclosure system that provided the ability to create a habitat with specific characteristics: We purchased a 4’x2’x4′ Zen Habitat PVC enclosure for our tree monitors in the summer of 2020.
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