Unboxing & Assembly
The Toad Ranch Bask N Hide comes with a packet that contains your receipt, a little thank-you note, assembly instructions, screws, and a sticker. (It’s the little things that count!) I opted to assemble the hide without referencing instructions to test ease of assembly. The pre-drilled pilot holes and labeled pieces make guessing what goes where a breeze.
The pilot holes are designed so the screws recess into the PVC rather than sitting flush. I’d prefer they sit flush, but it’s not a big deal. In theory, you can use the pilot holes to install the screws with a Philips screwdriver. The effort toward simplifying assembly is appreciated, but I will always prefer a drill over a screwdriver, and this made assembly very fast. As an additional benefit, I didn’t have to struggle as much with keeping the walls in place as I painfully placed each screw.
It’s a little bit difficult to pop both pieces of stone into the top (as opposed to dropping in a single piece). What worked best for me was putting them in simultaneously so they could fall in together. If I tried to put one in followed by the other, the second piece wouldn’t quite fit. The result, however, is a comfortably snug fit.
As for the labels? They weren’t a problem at all. They came off at slightly-higher-than-average room temperature without leaving a noticeable residue as long as I tugged at them slowly.
Functionality
As the name implies, the Toad Ranch Bask N Hide is designed to function as both a warm hide and a basking platform. Whenever I recommend a warm hide for a reptile, I typically recommend also placing a piece of flagstone or even stone tile on top to prevent the reptile from using plastic as a basking surface. Something that immediately interested me about this product is that it applies this same concept without the DIY.
At first glance, the thin stone tile may seem like a problem — would it crack easily? would it get too hot? In reality, the thin stone does an effective job of transferring warmth into the hide below for a functional warm hide, much more efficient, in fact, than my own solution of placing a piece of flagstone on top of a black box hide: At a surface temp of ~119°F (this sounds very hot, but it really isn’t when you measure temp with a temp probe to get a sense of immediate air temp or simply place your hand under the basking spot – very typical of a surface warmed by sunlight), the interior of the hide got to about 98°F. for reference, the cool side of the enclosure at this time was ~79°F.
This helped assuage my concerns that the interior wouldn’t get warm enough without dedicated secondary heat source. This warm hide is clearly quite good at funneling warmth from the surface to the interior. In all honesty, in some applications it might be a little too good at transferring that energy — if you like the basking temp but the warm hide temp is too high, I’d recommend adding additional tile or even thin flagstone on top as a buffer.
Because the tile isn’t secured to the hide itself, it does allow for top access if needed. That said, the fit is tight enough that you may need a flathead screwdriver or similar to pry it open if you want to go this direction. The tiles don’t actually sit flush with the top, which helps in this respect. There’s also no bottom piece to this hide, which makes access to your pet as well as increasing humidity a simple matter.
- NOTE: Avoid forcibly removing a reptile from their hiding place, as this is highly stressful and can damage the trust relationship between animal and keeper!
