Most of the breeders I know will not use the cages with tubes. Sometimes hamsters are too large for them (the standard for a Syrian calls for the animal to be as large as possible without being fat), they are hard to clean and can harbor bacteria, and they sometimes tend to come loose offering a chance for escape. Most actually use aquariums or plastic totes with wire tops. A very common cage is to take a clear plastic tote, cut a square hole in the top, then put wire over the hole using a hot glue gun and a few nuts and bolts to hold the wire in place. Personally, because of space here, I use a cage called My Super Pet or something like that. It has a deep plastic base with the top half being wire. I like wire cages because to me they sort of double the space since the hamster gets to climb on them. Mine treat them like monkey bars. Many breeders will not use wire because they are afraid babies will get stuck in it and get hurt, but the bottoms on these are deep enough that that is not usually a problem. I've only ever had one baby to get out through the wire out of all the litters I have raised. Luckily, I have a really great locally owned pet store here in town that buys my babies for store credit, so my hamsters pay for my dog food! lol I will try to post pics of some of the ham's sometime...I raise mostly tricolors and silvergrays, which is a fairly unusual color to find.
