# Big Planted Vivarium Build (lots of pics)



## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

I started this off with a plan to make a large planted terrarium. I set some strict criteria, the viv had to be completely naturally themed (or at least a very convincing version of natural) with all life support completely hidden from view. I wanted lush plant growth and a very authentic rainforest feel to it. Here is my build. 

I started off with an Atasuki glass vivarium. These are a cheaper alternative to Exo-Terras but at less than half the price for the equivalent size, I think they are excellent value. I modified mine – a lot. Firstly I covered all exterior glass panes with black self adhesive Fablon. This wasn't too hard and gave a very tidy, bubble free finish. This was purely for aesthetics. It looks similar to the dutch dart frog rack style and also allowed me to hide anything I glued to the inside walls. 



In this picture, I have removed the bottom vent and glass tracking. I replaced the mesh it came with with a strip of finer mesh to prevent fruit fly escapes if I ended up keeping dart frogs in there. 

Obviously I needed a cabinet to put it on. I got the doors from an Ikea clearance and made the cabinet out of MDF. 





I wanted the cabinet to house heated containers for live foods and some of my invert collection so I included vents, insulation and heating. 





With a base for the viv complete I set about the fun bit. A good mate of mine was kind enough to teach me how to render with concrete. This is a bit of a fine art and takes some practise but I'd say it's about the most fun you can have with a bag of cement. 

Firstly you need to make a rough skeleton of your desired object, in my case, a buttress tree root. 

Apologies, I am missing a photo of the polystyrene part here so you will have to use your imagination. Essentially you cut it out in 2d from a sheet of regular polystyrene from B&Q. When you have the shapes right, you can hold them together with bamboo BBQ skewers and reinforce with a bit of chicken wire at any potential weak parts. Fill any spaces with expanding foam to fill the tree out and then carve it until you get a more natural shape. 

The next stage is where the mess starts (as if there wasn't enough polystyrene balls everywhere!)
The base coat...

This shows the tree after its first coat of cement. I made a 3:1 sand : cement mix and added fibreglass strands to give it good strength. I incorporated plant pots with drilled PVC drainage to allow plants to grow and appear as epiphytes. Here you can see that it looks a bit rough and patchy and still slightly angular. This is OK, the detail comes in the next coat. 



The second coat of cement is smoother, make a 2:1 mix and do not add fibreglass strands, apply with a cement trowel, spreader and paintbrush to give a smoother shape and then let it begin to stiffen. You can begin to carve at it with a wire brush, a knife, modelling tools, lolly sticks - whatever you have



as it dries you can see the detail begin to emerge.


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

More to come...


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

To illustrate some of the other things you can do with render, we tried out a few textures on some scrap wood in the garage. This one is a representation of a cracked rocky surface which would look pretty cool in a desert / savannah set up.


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## plasma234 (Feb 27, 2013)

That tree root is phenomenal. It will look immense with mounted bromeliads and ferns in those pots. :no1: I think maybe spotlighting would work really well with this tank, so the tree root is high light and the ground is shaded/lower lights, but that is just my 2cents :lol2:

I also love the idea of utilizing the space in the cabinet for feeders, i might end up stealing this idea :whistling2:


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

Thanks Plasma, that's not far off what I ended up doing. In the first pic you can see some LED floodlights mounted to the top of the viv. I've got more photos to upload and will do a little section on lighting.


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## Meefloaf (Mar 24, 2013)

this is amazing


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

I made two of these trees, one for each side of the tank with the idea that the roots would cross over eachother in the middle. The following photos show a bit more of the detail in the render. 








The piece of pipe visible in the bottom picture is connected to the plant pots for drainage. This is important as eventually the pots would become waterlogged, they are placed at a roughly 45 degree angle with the holes in the bottom siliconed over, then a hole is drilled for the pipe which is also siliconed in place. 

Once the two trees had properly dried, they were given a test fitting in the viv. As you can see, they are pretty big. The tank measures 100 x 50 x 100 cm and they only just fit in with less room to spare than I had originally planned. If you do this, remember to factor in how thick your layer of cement will be and how much bigger it will be than the original polystyrene structure.



Once the cement dried, they were stained with a mixture of brown and black acid stain, this was messy and the end result was not quite the colour I wanted but it still gave a quite natural finish



After this I lightly dry brushed some lighter brown acrylic paint mixes over the concrete tree roots to pick out some of the detail. All of these materials are safe for use in animal enclosures and are used in many zoos and public aquaria but it should be borne in mind that the cement can leach lime into an aquatic set up and so should be left to soak for an extended if possible, even longer still if you are very paranoid. I settled for one month outside in the rain. 

Anyway, after the acrylic I lined the deep cracks in the trees with gorilla glue, spread thickly. There are a few opinions on how best to use it but I poured it from the bottle and used an old paint brush to whip it into a foam as I spread it. I pressed on wet cocos from a normal expanding brick and kept pushing it down every 5-10 minutes for an hour or so until it had set.

 







Once this had all dried and the loose cocos had been brushed away and following a bit of effort, the trees found their way into the viv.


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## buddah (Dec 23, 2009)

Very impressive :2thumb:


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## plasma234 (Feb 27, 2013)

Ha, the first two posts were fantastic, this has just taken it over the edge. This tank is truly epic. I cannot wait to see it planted, if the detail and hard work you have put into the hardscaping is anything to go by. :2thumb:


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

Thanks for the kind words guys, plenty more to come :blah:


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## swede (Aug 7, 2011)

Absolutely love the "tree roots", very impressive. I am looking forward to see the finished result!


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## Firetaster (Apr 7, 2013)

We need updates ;-)


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

Another update on the way soon. I've been busy today with some baby sand boas. Check out the video 
Eryx conicus parturition - YouTube


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## my_shed (Jan 5, 2011)

Just when I was feeling happy that my vivs are upto scratch..........someone goes and raises the bloody bar!!:devil:

Great work mate, think I may have a go with cement insteax of grout next time, the sculptability looks handy 

Dave


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## mickmorelia (Feb 19, 2011)

Wow , very impressive . Have thought of something similar for a long time so great to see someone actually do it !


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## Terrarium Supplies (May 12, 2012)

Superb detailing jimmy. Looking forward to the next installment.


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## Sadistic Taste (Feb 17, 2013)

Excellent work!

Can I pick your Brian a bit please?  

I've been searching the internet, looking for information on using cement in an enclosure. I want to make some large rocks/boulders for my savannah monitor enclosure.

What I'm wondering is, what cement are you using, and what acid stain? Also, does the stain seal the cement, or do you have to use a concrete sealer on top? I've asked in several shops, but I've been advised against buying there stains for reptile enclosures. I know this method is used for theme parks and zoo exhibits, just can't seem the find information on the correct materials. :/


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## GECKO MICK (Jun 6, 2012)

coming On really nice, looking toward to seeing the finished item.: victory:


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## Lennymonaghan (Jun 17, 2013)

Amazing


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## creg (Jun 10, 2012)

Well done mate that looks cracking, will be amazing when planted and grown in.


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## Maidenhair (Jun 29, 2013)

This is gorgeous i love it, your concrete sculpting is amazing, can i just ask though isnt it incredibly heavy? i've been thinking of using some concrete to design my snakes vivs but i'm worried about the weight

I cant wait to see the finished viv though its amazing so far  :no1:


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## tarantulamatt (Nov 12, 2009)

dude that's so cool!! :mf_dribble:

take care!


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

Alrighty, time for an update. This time I'm going to do the techy stuff so here's the rain system. 
I decided that my chosen vivarium subjects was to be the red eyed tree frog, they're cool and they look all jungly and that. I believe that is adequate justification for holding this species, I am sure you will agree. 


Now, breeding red eyes is something I have not cracked yet but I am assured that a 'dry' season followed by a rainy 'wet' season is the trigger. With this in mind, I decided that the option to keep the substrate 'dry' for 6 months and 'wet' for six months was the way to go. Instead of going for a deep bioactive substrate as you might see in a large planted viv I tried something else. If you look back a few photos ago you might have noticed that the floor seems to be coated in cocos. It is. I gorilla glued a flay layer of cocos as a substrate and then scattered almond leaf litter over it. This means that all I have to do to flood it for spawning is to remove the leaves and fill it with water, the 'substrate' stays where it is. 

Here is some detail on the rain system. 



Driving the whole thing is an Eheim compact 1000 submersible pump. I chose this for a few reasons. Firstly, it's an Eheim so it'll remain a sturdy friend for a long time. It can fun in low water levels, you might even get away with just 1 inch of water so perfect for vivariums. It has a good head height and can easily pump my rain up to the top. 

On the hose is an inline mini filter. This is essential if you want to run a decent spray bar, without this it'll be a matter of hours before your spray bar is clogged up with soil. It's a simple bit of kit and only cost about £4. In the photo the pump is wearing a rather fetching sponge cover, this is just to give me a bit more protection from clogging. 







So here is the rain system. The hose from the pump runs to a hose tail and then some 12mm pvc pipework. The pvc is from dartfrog but you can most likely get it cheaper from a pvc plumbing supplier like BSS or IPS. The spray bar was drilled and then green house irrigation system spray nozzles were pushed in (actually I had to bang them in with a rubber mallet, it was a right pain). The spray nozzles and the inline filter were bought from easywatering.co.uk.



Here's the rain system installed, as you can see, I made another lid for the viv from twinwall polycarb to replace the mesh lid which it came with. This was more suitable for maintaining higher humidity. 

That's the spray bar done, planting next....


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## jimmydale (Aug 3, 2010)

To everyone who has enquired about the render and staining, I promise I will do a post on this shortly. I'll outline the materials and where to get them from and a few hints from my own trials. 
In the mean time, here's a picture of my planted aquarium. 



The vivarium build took such a long time that I actually managed to grow a whole aquascape from start to completion (and more recently to an overgrown swamp) in the time that it took me to do my viv


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## rexob (Sep 1, 2012)

Brilliant


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## Sadistic Taste (Feb 17, 2013)

Rain system looks great, will be good to see a video of it working.


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