Types of Cages

Glass Aquarium
     Aquariums are generally not a good place to keep rats. The natural scent of your critter plus the odors from its feces and urine can hover near the bottom, making it a noxious habitat for your pet. The ammonia from their urine can be extremely harmful to their sensitive respiratory systems and can cause distress and respiratory infections. Unless your aquarium was extremely large and you clean it every few days, I would not recommend an aquarium at all as a good habitat for a rat.

The Plastic Tunnel / Add-On Cage
     These cages are well-built from hard plastics, and they are a lot of fun to make new tunnels, mazes, and games for your pet with. They are much better suited to younger or female rats, as most rats as they get older are too large to get though some of the tubes. You can attach other plastic cages together with tubes and make a whole city for your rats, if you wish. Most types of tunnel systems also come with adapters so that you can connect the tunnels to a wire cage, too. However, they are quite hard to clean, as you usually have to take everything apart. The tubes wash easily with water, but they are difficult to snap apart. Other than that, they are wonderful cages for small or baby rats.

Wire Cage
    The most widely used enclosure for rats. It allows visibility of your pet, maximum air flow to minimize odors, and can be cleaned simply by removing the bottom, which is usually plastic and very durable. Many things can be attached to it, such as a running wheel and more importantly a water bottle. Other levels can also be added, depending on the size of the cage. It has been proven that rats tend to behave more socially in a larger, more complex cage. And it's fun to watch them scurry up ladders and around in wheels. The wire cage is most likely your best bet when choosing at habitat for your rat.
     If the wire cage you buy has a wire grating for a floor, it is best to remove it (which can be done easily with pliers) or simply purchase a cage without a wire bottom. Rats can easily get their feet caught, or if they fall from one of the levels, their chance for injury will greatly increase. Besides, you want your critter to have a nice, soft floor to walk around on, not cold metal bars. You also have to make sure that your rats can't fit through the bars. Some cages have thin bars, but the ones on the corners are farther apart. If you find that there are a few bars that your rat can fit through, you can use duct tape to patch up these wider areas until your pet grows older and larger and cannot fit through anymore.
There are many different types of wire cages, and not all are suitable for rats. The pictures below will explain some of the more commonly sold or hand-made types of wire cage.

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This type of cage is marketed for chinchillas. It has a door on top and in the front and a large plastic pan. It came with two wooden shelves (you can see the brackets for them along the sides) but they were unpainted wood and I took them out, replacing them with a hammock, a plastic organizer bin zip-tied to the side, and a store-bought corner shelf with ladder. This type of cage is suitable for 2 medium to large rats.

This is a good example of a hand made cage. This cage was originally made for a ferret. It has a single door in the front, two wire levels each with a ladder, a large metal tray, and the entire top can open up for easier cleaning. With the addition of several hammocks and tubes, it can be quite a nice cage for 6-8 medium to large sized rats.

This was originally a ferret cage, but the bar spacing was very wide so I bought plastic coated hardware cloth from Home Depot and fastened it to every side and both doors with J-clips. It had came with two plastic levels and two wire ladders, but in my experience plastic levels only get full of urine and must be cleaned very often so I removed them, replacing them with hammocks and some organizer bins bought at the dollar store. I disliked the bottom pan of this cage, it was not very deep and litter often got kicked out to the floor.

This was the first cage I built myself, and now that I have had more experience with rats I would not use this design again. I used wood because it was cheap and easy to work with, and though I put the wire on the inside of the wood so it wouldn't get as badly chewed, it still did. Also, in the corner where they always urinated the wood soaked it up and became hard to clean. The entire top of this cage lifts up on a hinge, and though it is good for cleaning it's impossible to keep the rats inside when you're lifting the lid to feed or just get one rat out. I did put a door in the front but it was kind of hard to close so I didn't use it if I could help it.

This was originally a large bird cage, and because it had two doors in the front, one on the top and one on the bottom section, I decided to turn it into two separate cages. I cut a section of plywood and fixed it in place with chains in the center of the cage, and made a cardboard runner covered with many layers of duct tape to go around the edge so the litter wouldn't get kicked out easily. After adding a few levels (taken from old, too small cages) a wheel and a hammock, it turned out to be a pretty good cage. I wouldn't recommend keeping males and females in this type of cage, as if they do manage to escape into the other side you may end up with some pregnant rats.

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