Safe sealants and varnish?

[kaleb]

I have a fully wooden cage build made solely out of pine wood.

Problem is rough wood leaves some little gaps in some of the joins that bits of degu mess gets stuck in around the edges and their pee seems to want to stain.

I tried a spray on varnish that was reported safe but it seems to react with their pee and doesn't do the job. Something that paints on would of course be better!

For sealant I was looking into aquarium sealants as they seem non toxic and I could use that to seal up all the joins in the cage.

Afraid to buy anything without somebody who can confirm its safety first though!

Thanks a lot for any advice or recommendations!
Kaleb

[bouncy]

Hi Kaleb,

Aquarium sealant is fine.

Have you considered some cheap lino tiles (Wilkinson do a cheap pack)? This will stop the wee touching the wood, and makes cleaning easy! Other members on here have used them with great success.

[moletteuk]

I have used Cuprinol Shades and also 'low voc' water based varnish but I can't vouch for them being 100% safe, but I think they are OK for small amounts of nibbling. Unfortunately neither really blocks out wee.

Aquarium sealant is fine and I have used a plain water based rainproof caulk (because I already had it) for sealing the cracks between the shelves and the walls, I pushed it right into the crack and then wiped away the residue carefully so they couldn't actually access it to chew. This definitely helped keep the cage clean, so much crud gets wedged down those gaps otherwise.

It depends if they pee right up the wall, but I found square shaped plates and ceramic tiles with extra substrate on good for pee areas.

Depending on what your goos are like for scraping and chewing flat surfaces, you could also apply some fablon to the pee areas, and as Bouncy says, vinyl tiles are good for lining high pee areas of floors/ shelves.