# Vivexotic Maxi Review



## LFBP-NEIL (Apr 23, 2005)

Review of the new Vivexotic Maxi
By Neil Reed - Livefoodsbypost.co.uk

This has got to be one of the hardest reviews i have had to write this year, I am struggling with it! Normally i like to pick apart a product and highlight the good and the bad but with this new vivarium I am really struggling.

Vivexotic is a brand name of Hagen but remain manufactured and designed in the UK at their original home in Scotland by a company called Aquapac. I have been using Aquapac vivs for at least the past 12 years since they were basically white boxes that joined together like a kitchen cabinet and had a thin piece of hardboard tacked the back with a solid piece of plastic mesh which you couldn’t poke any wires through! So its been interesting watching the products develop and progress over the years.

For me that peaked with the vivexotic VX range as they were the perfect size for all manner of species, when they were replaced by the Vivas with its new sizing and the now defunct repti stax we as retailers were essentially left without a vivarium that was as versatile as the original VX’s.

The VX’s weren’t perfect, owing to the way the front top rails were fitted we occasionally experienced the top of the viv bowing or the front rail bending which would cause the light from inside to be visible through a gap at the top. Also the glass was in my opinion too small giving a letterbox range of vision into the vivarium. Fix those problems and you would have the perfect vivarium…

Which is pretty much what has been done with the Repti Home Maxi, It looks feels and goes together pretty much the same as the old VX’s, cam and dowel for the upper fixtures and long screws for the base fitting. Assembly is straightforward with all the simple screws, dowels and fittings. Everything fits together as it should, all the panels are flush, neat and tidy. No chipped edges, no loose edging strips everything just looks and feels as it should. Glass is toughened and polished safety glass so there are no rough looking edges and it fits in the runners perfectly, in fact they have altered the design slightly so the glass fits further into the top track so that problem we have experienced of the glass falling out should in theory be a thing of the past.

Speaking of glass falling out, on the VX’s we had the problem that the top rail was fitted to the viv at the sides by dowels so we had bending in the middle and then the roof was screwed to the top rail in the centre which made removing the lid difficult. This was redesigned on the reptistax/homes’s by fixing the top rail directly to the roof with the cam and dowels which led to floppy top rail syndrome, where if you put too much pressure on the glass the rail could bend and the glass would fall out. This has been addressed on the Maxi by adding 50 mm dowels alongside the cam/dowel fixing, I have tried hard to make it bend and get the glass to fall out and the most movement i managed to get was 1 mm of lateral movement, if the viv was silicone sealed as advised then this movement would be non existent.

So what else has changed, well not much. Ventilation is provided by the now familiar oval design vivexotic air vents the cable access holes have been made bigger and moved in a bit, these are now big enough to get three cables through but anyone housing a small snake in one of these vivs be warned they are big enough for a young corn to escape from, make sure you either silicone or tape over them if housing a small snake. The next step in vivarium design I am waiting for them to come up with is a pre moulded foam or rubber insert that fits into the cable holes that has a slit down the middle so it can take the cables but won’t let anything escape.

So the big burning question that everyones getting ready to pick apart – sizing??? Well the model I am test driving is the repti home maxi large its a fraction under 4ft at 45.3” but 19” deep (19.3 to be exact), this gives a useable floor space of 6 square feet. The height of the viv is 22” which means we can get all of our lighting and heating inside and provide plenty of basking areas and gradients underneath. For me this is a great size for a whole host of species but in particular the kids favourite the solitary bearded dragon.

This has been a hard product to review as I can’t find anything bad to say about it! Its pretty much a return to form for the Vivexotic brand, all that remains to be seen now is the pricing and where it places itself in the market.










Vivexotic take it to the max! | Livefoodsby post.co.uk Blog


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## Hagen UK (Sep 28, 2012)

Thanks Neil, nice review! To win a Repti Home Maxi viv check out the competition on the comps page!


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## JT27 (Oct 25, 2013)

*Anyone got any new news?*

Nice job on the write up.


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## JT27 (Oct 25, 2013)

*Anyone got any new news on where to buy?*

When can we get them?


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## KingElf (Sep 23, 2013)

may have to get a couple of these , I also like the Clearseal wooden vivs and ND aquatics vivs are great too


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## Hagen UK (Sep 28, 2012)

Just an update, release is still slated for mid November, will let you know when we have a definite date.


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