Ware Flying Saucer Small Pet Exercise Wheel, Large, 12-Inch

I recently moved across the country with several pets including two chinchillas. When we got here; we were staying in a temporary apartment for 30 days while our possessions were being moved and stored so we had to get temporary cages/ pet supplies for the chins. Now, the chinchillas already had two really awesome wheels that are now in storage. One of them is called a "Sage Jasmine" wheel available on Ebay... very hard to find or I would provide a link. It's basically like a giant metal pie plate. The second is the metal version of the "flying saucer" style wheel: . We didn't want to buy another one of these wheels because they retail for about $75 (but well worth it). We decided to buy this plastic one figuring it would do over the next 30 days.

Only one chinchillas has used it (which was expected because only one uses the metal one; that's why we have two different style wheels) but watching her on this plastic version just makes us feel bad. She is in no way overweight, but the plastic bends under her weight and moves at a steady crawl (she can really book it on the metal one). We see her trying to go faster but it just continues to move at a snail's pace. Even with the slow walking, the base would slide across the cage bottom and into the bars. I tried taping it down, but this just made the chinchilla much more interested in getting at that tape so I removed it.

The second big flaw with this wheel is that it easily removes from the base. There is no locking mechanism and my chin realized this after a few days and now all she wants to do is take the wheel off and chew on it, haha. This wheel might work better for lighter weight animals such as rats, but it's not so good for chinchillas. I can't wait to get their metal wheels out of storage, I am sure they're quite bored.

If you have chinchillas, skip this wheel and save up for the metal ones; either flying saucer or the pie plate style. It's really worth it and they'll last forever. The larger metal wheels are also much safer for chinchillas spines, which bend the wrong way on small plastic wheels.

My hamster Puff is a very picky Syrian hamster. She has had a silent spinner 6.5" (too small,)a silent spinner 12" (didn't fit in her cage) a Super Pet classic wire wheel (injured her,)and several other plastic wheels from her various cages (habitrail, critter trail, etc.) Now Puff is an average-sized Syrian, and she runs All night Every night. I had been searching for a safe, quiet (she is in my bedroom,) and attractive wheel since I got her almost 2 months ago. Well this is it! It is super quiet, the color is very nice, and she runs on it without getting "spun out" or getting her toes caught. The medium-sized version of this wheel is TOO small for even a small Syrian hamster. However, this size is absolutely perfect! The one problem is it is very large and took a little creativity to fit it in her deluxe RAT cage (it will not fit in average sized wire hamster cages.) It is so fun to watch her go on this thing and I highly recommend it, especially from Amazon; which compared to the $25 I paid for it at PetSmart is a great deal!

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This is MUCH quieter than any other running wheel I've ever owned, and I've owned rodents for about 20 years! Even the so-called Silent Spinner used to keep me up at night, but not this. The sound of my rats eating is sometimes louder than the sound they make when running full speed on their saucer wheel. They haven't tried to chew on it, nor have they toppled the saucer from its base. It took about a week for one of them to get used to it, although it's so quiet she may have been using it even sooner while I was asleep. The other still doesn't seem too sure about it, but isn't afraid of it or anything. I would describe myself as a moderately light sleeper, but have not been woken up by this saucer wheel, even though it's about 8 feet away from where I sleep. My only 'complaint' of sorts, is that I think the saucer should be curved a bit more so that the area they run on is at less of an angle. They don't seem to mind the slight angle though, so I wouldn't consider it a flaw. Sometimes when they run really hard on it, it taps against the base a little. This will probably become more pronounced when they get full grown, so that's something to keep in mind for heavier pets if you intend to keep this in your bedroom.

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My hamster loves this. She had no trouble learning it. It took her about 3 minutes to figure out where to run in place so she did not fly off (don't worry, she had a lot of soft stuff to land on). She was using a regular style wheel before but had no trouble figuring this out. And it is blessedly silent except for the pitter-patter of tiny hamster feet. I did get the 12-inch and I think anything smaller would have been too small for her.

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I have been using this wheel for my hedgehogs for the past 2 and a half years. I used to use the standard large run-around wheels such as Comfort Wheel by Super Pet but became tired with how loud it was at night when my hedgehogs were running and how difficult it was to clean the next day. With the Flying Sauce wheel, any waste tends to fall right off into the bedding so that my pets do not run in their own mess all night and getting what I call "poop boots". The wheels are easy to rinse and quick to dry. The best feature in my opinion is that they are so quiet! Their running no longer keeps me up at night.

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