Product Reviews - Rotastak
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Review 1 of 6
Place purchased: Second hand from Local pet shop
Price: £15 although new setups can cost £25 +
Score: 2/10
The only thing i found this cage useful for was keeping a mouse in when they are sick or injured for no more than a week. It has bad ventilation, always opened up the lid and it really smelled and was stuffy, even with girls. It gives hardly any space for toys, and using suction cups to hang hammocks etc is hard because of the weird shape. Try hanging a square hammock is an almost S shaped tank. Also they are awkward to clean out. You can detach the wheels to give them a full scrub and with so many pieces to fit together for a decent size set up I often get lost. The only good thing I can point out with this cage is the ability to have lots of separate rooms for you mice to explore, although again that makes cleaning out difficult especially when you have a lot of cages to clean. My advice, don’t get one!
Reviewer: Ruth
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Review 2 of 6
Place purchased: -
Price: We got it second hand and cost us £20 for LOADS
Score: 2/10
As cool and impressive Rotastak looks when set up, it is the biggest waste of time ever! We had four boys in it (before we knew about their smell and ventilation issues) and it was cleaned out about twice a week. Each clean out took about 4 hours to complete and was the biggest hassle ever! The only up side, really, was that we could completely change it every clean out, so it’s like the boys had a completely new home, which they seemed to enjoy. Eventually, as the boys got older, we moved them into a 3 tiered hamster cage and, in my opinion, that was a much better choice! For the price you will be spending to make the Rotastak big enough to be liveable for a group of meece, you’d be better off buying a Jenny and kitting it out.
Reviewer: Amalthea
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Review 3 of 6
Place purchased: -
Place purchased: -
Price: Around £30 Second Hand
Score: 9/10
I absolutely love this cage, probably more than the mice do! It has a series of room which are all linked by tubes. The mice are in their element in here, running from room to room.
The cage is spacious and luxurious. There are 6 rooms for them to hang out in. It’s handy to be able to label each room for them. One can be the bedroom where they all sleep, one can be the living room where they all play and one can be the dining room where the food dish and water bottle is.
A few things about this cage that bring it down. It’s awkward to clean, there are lots of little parts and bits come loose here and there resulting in a lot of litter hitting the floor for me. It takes quite a while to take apart and clean as well, around half an hour for me. You also need to buy ladders for the mice to climb up tubes as only the expert ones can do so!
If it were not for these factors this cage would have gotten a 10.
Reviewer: Little_emmo
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Review 4 of 6
Place purchased: See below
Price: Rotastack various models, from different petshops, cost me over £100 all together.
Score: 2/10
I have bought, almost collected, lots of rotastck over the years. I have only recently realised how much of a bad cage it is. I have the ‘Creepy Castle’, ‘Pink Palace’, ‘Fun Fairground’ and ‘Jungle’ models. I attached some of them together for my hamster, Shady, as I feel he needs as much room as I can possibly give him. He seems to like it, but the fact that it cost so much money and is just so hard to clean has really put me off Rotastack… I will stick with Imac Fantacy, Zoo Zones, wire starter rat cages and good old bin cages in the future. It costs around £50 new for each model, which to be perfectly honest, is robbery. I think you can buy it cheaper second hand off ebay though, so if you wanted to get it, then ebay would be your best bet.
The ‘Creepy Castle’ consists of one main compartment, three smaller round rooms and two tiny round rooms. They are connected together by tubes. The ‘Pink Palace’ cage has one main compartment, one smaller room and one tiny round room. The ‘Fun Fairground’ consists of one main compartment, one smaller room, and one ‘dining room’, which is the same size as the smaller round rooms. The ‘Jungle’ cage has 1 main compartment, one smaller round room and oe tint round room. All cages come with a 6″ wheel. I personally feel that the cage is overpriced, poor quality, much too small for a mouse if bought seperately and much to hard to clean. Shady always seems to be chewing on his bars to get out.. I think that he might be slightly bored in there.
All in all, I think it’s a waste of time and money, and you’d be much better suited with buying an Imac Fantacy cage, a pennie starter rat cage, any other starter rat cage, a Zoo zone 1 or 2, or a simple, cheap bin cage.
Reviewer: LilyandLola1
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Review 5 of 6
Place purchased: Wilkinsons and Petworld (kept buying more to add on)
Price: Dont even wanna think about the total cost, no idea!
Score: 7/10
We first bought this cage as a home for our two baby boys who grew up in it very happy, then after living together for 7months they decided to be very aggressive towards each other. When it got too much, we decided to eventually separate the boys. This cage was ideal for it, it meant that we didn’t have to buy a new cage to have them living separately, we just divided the compartments between the two of them and didn’t join them up. The only problem is that both boys love the long pyramid section with the caged part so we have to swap them over each week lol.
The boys love running through the tubing and this can be set up at any angle so the drops dont have to be too steep. Another plus point is that there are so many combinations for setting up the system, your mouse can have a different home every week! We have bought the maze section as well which is great for hiding treats.
There are a few reasons the rotastak hasn’t been given 10/10, first is that it isn’t very sturdy, we haven’t had it a year yet and already we have had to start replacing wheels and other parts of the plastic are cracking (probably due to the amount of cleaning it needs with housing boys!). The other thing I have noticed is that although the mice have plenty of different compartments, there is only one big-ish one (the pyramid) and whoever doesn’t have that, appears really depressed for the week. So I feel like there’s a lack of running around space if they don’t have the pyramid (maybe its just that I like to spoil them lol).
Reviewer: Chris10
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Review 6 of 6
Place purchased: -
Price: -
Score: 8/10
Rotastak is my absolute favourite for keeping mice. The main reason I chose rotastak was because I have a cat and feel that opened barred cages were a big no no for me as my cat could cause injury to my precious little darlings.
Positives of rotastak.
Can be dismantled and re-arranged to creative an enriched environment.
Virtually cat proof.
All pieces can be dismantled for cleaning. No awkward corners.
Mice get a home with lots of tunnels to run and climb in, closer to their natural habitat.
Plenty of places to hide for the more nervous.
Stimulating as their are different levels to climb.
Easy to find rotastak on ebay and at car boot sales. Lots of it about.
New products always being developed.
Mice cannot hurt themselves by falling.
The maze addition is great as it can be completely removed for easy cleaning and makes your mouse work for its treats.
The small bedroom addition can be placed sideways for mice, mine use theirs as a toilet, which is easily removed for cleaning.
Mouse ladders are available if you want to extend the system vertically.
Negatives of rotastak.
New systems can be pricey.
The starter home in my opinion isn’t large enough to keep anything in.
Product is aimed at children ie “Pink Palace” and “Pirates ship” to name but a few.
Rotastak can take up quite a large area.
Can be difficult to retrieve your pet if you have a large system.
-The rotastak was developed with hamsters in mind.Therefore the vertical tubing makes it impossible to mice to climb without the aid of a ladder.You can build horizontally but you will need alot of space to do this. There are ways around it, by using the 90 degree bends and a short tube the mice can reach upper chambers. The rotastak system suits me and my mice are healthy and happy.
Reviewer: Flukeangel
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