Customer Reviews

Super Pet CritterTrail Three Habitat

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The Crittertrail Three is a beautiful cage. It is colorful and bright and was a much prettier cage than most we saw at the pet store. HOWEVER.. it is a pain to put together, a pain to keep clean and it literally falls apart after a short period of time. We have had ours for 6 months and are already looking to buy a new one because this one has already broken. Right now I have duck tape holding the top closed so my hamster will not escape.

Please, do not waste your money.

I just finished trying to clean the cage without it coming apart in little pieces, good luck. It was hard to put together and it's been even harder to keep it together. It's not well designed or well made. I expected better for $50. I think we will have to go back to the modified bird cage we were using before. I agree with the previous poster.

I have had three of these and have had to return all three. They are very poorly made. The pieces of plastic break very easily and I have had my hamsters escape many a time. Do not waste your money on a critter trail cage.

Impossible to clean, you remove the top, everything comes apart. My hamsters escaped countless times, found myself having to duct tape parts of the cage they were escaping from. Plastic breaks all over the place, more duct tape. This is a poor excuse for a cage.

This product is hard to put together which would not be an issue except that it falls apart each time you go to clean it. It is devilish hard to keep together (we have resorted to tape) and puzzle-like to reassemble (required after each cleaning). We have it in our bedroom and have to sleep in another room if we do not have the required 45 minutes to clean it when necessary which would be every 2 days ideally if your pets happen to be mice. I might just have to make my own cage from hardware cloth and ditch this one altogether.

I bought CritterTrail Three after a wire in the last cage came apart. I specifically wanted a cage with wire sides so as to provide more ventilation for the hamsters. I also wanted a cage that provided lots of room for movement and an easily removable base for cleaning.

I did not see a display of the CritterTrail Three in the store, so I was pleasantly surprised by its size and aesthetic appeal. It's quite attractive and plenty of room for my two Winter White hamsters.

Putting it together took a little work. The plastic is very cheap and I was hoping nothing would crack when I was assembling it. Fortunately, nothing broke.

Once I got it together, I decided to test how easy to clean it really is. It's written right on the box that the bottom comes off and it's kid-friendly, easy to clean. Well, the bottom comes off after some tugging and pulling, and it's difficult to put back together. Unlike other reviewers, I resolve to clean this cage in a very messy way, like I did my last cage -- take the petting area off and dump it upside down. Then, take a hose and wash it down with soap and water. I did a test drive and wasn't careful, so the whole top came off, which is just as much trouble to put back on as the bottom.

So now, I have imposed upon myself some rules:
1) carry it only from the base, not by holding the wire portion or anyplace else.
2) never take the base off for cleaning.
3) when cleaning, take all the platforms and accessories out and dump the whole thing upside down into the trash. Be careful to hold the lid so that it does not fall off.

My last issue is with the water bottle. I ended up buying a glass water bottle to replace the one included. The water bottle is made of soft plastic. My hamsters being the type to chew everything would surely chew through this quickly. Also, the water does not dispense easily. After the initial spill of a few drops, nothing more comes out. I tap the tip lightly with my finger and still nothing. My hamsters couldn't figure it out even as they were sniffing about the spout. The situation was complicated by the fact that the spout faced straight down and forced them to look straight up to drink. I left the bottle in their cage for a few hours while I went to buy a replacement. As soon as I put the replacement bottle in, they drank with a vengence. Obviously, they weren't getting water.

PROS:
* lots of room for the hamsters to move about
* attractive
* expandable
* wire sides provide more ventilation than plastic cages.

CONS:
* brittle plastic
* falls apart easily
* base does not come off easily and is even more difficult to reassemble
* water bottle forces hamsters to bend their necks into an awkward upward position
* water bottle does not dispense water easily
* water bottle is soft plastic, easy for hamsters to chew through.

I don't think I'd buy this again. Well, maybe I would. My daughter thinks the cage is beautiful, which it is, and I do have a soft spot for her when she's just begging for it. I just won't take her shopping next time. From what other reviewers say here and the cheap plastic feel and the way it's falling apart brand spanking new, I'm pretty sure that will be sooner rather than later.

UPDATE:

I have found my solution of dumping the whole thing upside down not workable, since it falls apart anyway. Still I managed to keep most of it together.

One problem has surfaced after having owned it for less than two weeks, one of the horizontal wires came loose from the vertical wire. I tried to solder it back together and it is holding for now. Hope nothing else falls apart.

On a positive note, the deep tray does keep the scatter down to a minimum.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

It has been about nine months and two of the wires have come loose. It seems they are not joined very well. For the price I would expect more out of this cage. We will have to begin a search for another cage soon.

I was scared to buy this item do to the rating and the problems but I still got it. I have five mice and I need the room for them. When I bought the cage I read lots of reviews of the problems. This cage is not a slap together easy but when you take the time putting it together I had no mice missing or broke cage. I have had it for three months now and I still love it. I clean it out ever two weeks(my mice are potty trained) just pop the yellow hide out and pull the yellow floors out open all the doors and take wash cloth to wash down.

The cage is quite large -- four floors in total if you could the petting zone. My gerbils love this cage. They sleep in their petting zone (they actually take the bedding inside the bottom of the cage and take it up there to make their own den). The only con I have is that my gerbils were unfamiliar with their water bottle so I had to put another one in for access on the bottom floor. I also have realized that they will use the bottom floor, second floor, and fourth floor -- but not the third. I am unsure why. They also enjoy the built in wheel and love to run in it. If you are in the market for a cage for a hamster or a gerbil, this is the best cage I would ever recommend. It's easy to take apart, and easy to put back in place. You just need a little patience to make each floor of the cage level and straight.

This is a great cage for my hamster, Oreo.

When I first went to clean it, it fell apart. I had my sister hold the top of it and I took off the base to clean it. No problem at all! (Just a 2 person job)

Before this cage, she had a glass water bottle that hung. I put that in the cage. She didn't know how to use the plastic bottle. It came with a food dish too, which is neon yellow. (I already had a food dish, though!)

Oreo loved the tube that connected to the top sleeper. That's where her nest was. She also stored food there, too. It's see through, which was nice to be able to see her.

I bought mine on Amazon thru Drs Foster and Smith.

Quite frankly, I consider myself to be a veteran of these habitats by now as this is the third one I have recently ordered for my two new adorable pet mice, Meg and Gwendolyn.

I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT ANY OF THESE HABITATS ARE SUITABLE FOR ANY RODENTS LARGER THAN TINY MICE. The habitats are just too fragile and unstable. I would look towards a wire cage solidly built with a suitable exercise wheel and at least one level. However, if I had to choose one of the three I have recently experimented with for a larger rodent, I would definitely choose the Extreme Challenge Habitat as it is the strongest.

The first CritterTrail habitat I tried was the Large Clear View one. This one is simply too dangerous, as the water bottle and the wheel are both attached to the outside of the cage and the plug in is so weak that they easily fall off when in use, and the rodent escapes. It happened to me (I ended up Scotch taping the attachments to the cage), and I know that other reviewers have reported pet deaths due to a family cat catching the escaped rodents. Luckily, mine fell with the opening facing down, I heard the noise, immediately went to check on things and was able to shoo my cat away from the scene before having to face the horror it could have resulted in.

Another warning: Do not purchase any extension that rises up and has a play area on top, i.e., the loop-d-loop. These plug in very weakly, and easily fall off the habitat. I resorted to placing wide Scotch tape over the extension tube, but it still wasn't suitable. They are very difficult to clean as well. Needless to say, I ended up throwing this habitat out, happily never to see it again.

The next habitat I tried was an improvement - the Extreme Challenge Habitat. It didn't pose any dangers to my mice. It wasn't difficult to assemble. The only problem was that the mice had grown accustomed to the first habitat which was much larger and taller. They seemed to feel the new confinement. Also, the wheel rises up slightly from the habitat, and is set on a rail. While the mice did play in it, I think they found it a little too heavy to really enjoy a good turn in the wheel. They started sleeping far too much, and so I went on the lookout for a third (and hopefully final) habitat.

And so it is that I spent all of six hours yesterday attempting to assemble this Three Level Habitat. Now I read the reviews in which most reviewers pointed out that is very, very difficult to assemble. "Well," I thought, "it won't be for me. I've had experience. I understand how these habitats work. With my exposure to them, it's going to be a piece of cake!"

The last laugh was definitely on me. Touch anything even slightly more than gingerly, and the whole thing falls apart. And you have to begin all over again, all the while holding your breath. But do not get discouraged. They really are possible to assemble. But I sure do dread cleaning time. HINT: Take the sides off first.

What's good about the habitat? My mice are crazy about it and have come back to life. The wheel is not closed (closed wheels get real dirty and are difficult to clean, although soaking in water is the best way) and large enough so the two of them can play in it at the same time. Being open, one can keep it clean easily. The mice like the height of the habitat, and scampering up and down the various tubes. The three platforms make feeding easy as I can feed them on a bare platform instead of the ground floor where bedding or shavings are placed (I just tried using Carefresh bedding and its great, much easier to handle than Aspen shavings), making for very easy cleaning. I did replace the water bottle with one with a longer, slanted tube. But this cage really has to be handled with kid gloves. Well, at least my mice are happy.

I will still keep the Extreme Challenge habitat to place the mice in while I am cleaning this new Three Level one. But definitely good riddance to the Large Clear View habitat. A large, clear headache is what it gave me!