# Uromastyx Fake Rock "Dry Riverbed" Build



## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Having not had a chance to play about with fake rock since I built a beardie cage a couple of years ago, I decided it was time to have another go! It's going to be a desert viv like the last one, but I've got a couple of new ideas I wanted to try out. 

This is the last one I built, back in 2008: 










Building a Fake Rock Display Vivarium for Spyro - Hades Dragons UK




The main thing I want to try to get into this cage is a dry riverbed feel with cracked mud. Most of my ideas for the viv came from this photo that I took in Western Namibia a few years ago of a dry, cracked riverbed. Imagine that, with a burrow somewhere on the old river bank, and a little lizard running around. That's what I'm aiming for:










More on that later, as I'm still playing around with recreating that effect 




In the meantime, I need a vivarium for the cracked mud to go into, as soon as I figure it out. 

As luck would have it, I've got a spare viv lying around, and a male _Uromastyx occelata_ who needs taming down - what better way to do that than to give him a nice viv and move him into my living room where he'll get all the attention : victory: As he's primarily vegetarian and his livefood consists of locusts and hand-fed mealworms (as part of being tamed down), I won't have to worry about crickets etc disappearing down any cracks in the mud.

This is him - his name's Zulu:













One of the things I said after last time was that I'd plan my next build rather than making it up as I go along. So.... a sketch of what I was going to make:










As you can see, it's a highly detailed and technical plan, not just a doodle when I was bored... Completely planned in advance then and definitely not rushed into without really thinking it all through... :whistling2:




Onto the cage itself then - first up was to separate it into a "dry land" area and a "dry riverbed" area. I'm using plain old polystyrene for this build, as I didn't have any spaceboard or expanding foam lying around. It's not ideal, but it'll do the job. The raised area is going to be "dry land effect" and the rest will be "river bed effect":













Zulu will need somewhere to sleep - uros like their privacy. In the wild, they typically live in burrows which are a lot colder and more humid than the surrounding environment. In the mornings, as the world outside heats up, they sluggishly drag themselves to the burrow's entrance to warm up. That's exactly what I want to create here, so I'm actually building a separate "tunnel" onto the back of the vivarium. This means I don't have to worry about incorporating a nice-looking hide into the viv itself, and it means that there'll be more floor space to play with. This will be the entrace, in what will be the basking end:










This is the "work in progress" nest box at the back of the cage. You can see the other end of the pipe opens into this. It'll have a secure lid to give me access for cleaning/maintenance etc:













He'll also need somewhere to bask, so I decided to make some rocks on the "dry land" bit - it'll give him climbing space, and it'll also allow me to disguise the entrance to his burrow:










I also made a small "border" around what will be the dry river bed. The tree stump will go in the cracked mud so it's not just a flat expanse - if you check the photo this build is based on, there are things growing in the river bed. It'll also give me something to hide the food dish behind. As well as the stump, I'm planning to have some grasses in the river bed as well:













Once the shapes were finalised, the next step was to put a "base" down - resin has a nasty habit of dissolving polystyrene, so you need to use something as a barrier. For this build I'm using blue tissue paper and watered-down PVA. Not because it's any better than regular tissue paper, but because it was in the garage when I decided to start. Again, the forward planning really pays off :hmm:

This is where I start to think about adding the first textures to the build, as well as smoothing off any edges which look too sharp to be natural, and filling in any gaps that I left when cutting the polystyrene.

"River Bed" end:










"Dry Land" end:










Closeup on the basking rock:










The whole thing so far, with the tree stump as a reference:













I have a feeling that the cracked mud effect will involve water to begin with, so at this point I added the first sealing layer to the base of the vivarium - it'll probably all get a coat of resin later, to make a watertight "basin" for me to build my dry river bed in:













As this is a "fancy" cage, I don't want a big spotlight hanging down. As a result, I'm going to use 2-3 of these to heat the cage. They are nice little halogen spotlights which give out a surprising amount of heat considering they're only 20w each. I use them in smaller baby beardie vivariums, so they should do the trick here. They're also a lot brighter than conventional bulbs. Bright is good when you're dealing with species which live on the fringes of the Sahara!













That's where I'm up to so far - comments, critiques and ideas welcome :lol2:


I'll update when I've got a bit further into the build.


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## bothrops (Jan 7, 2007)

It looks absolutely awesome already...if it's anything like the beardie viv, it will be a truely stunning enclosure (it already looks like it'll rival most zoo enclosures!)


Very excited to see this develop (hence this post (a) for the 'big 'up'' and (b) for the subscription!)

Cheers

Andy


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## [email protected] (Sep 6, 2009)

:O WOW!!!! that is going to be FANTASTICO!!! well done!!!  you need to do a viv build every week


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## ch4dg (Jul 24, 2008)

that is......................... ACE :no1:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Cheers guys : victory:

Nothing much to report today - I've been busy on "another project" 

Hopefully I'll grab some time tonight or tomorrow to have a look at the lighting in more depth and perhaps get the first coat of resin applied.


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## Evie (Jan 28, 2008)

HadesDragons said:


> Cheers guys : victory:
> 
> Nothing much to report today - I've been busy on "another project"
> 
> Hopefully I'll grab some time tonight or tomorrow to have a look at the lighting in more depth and perhaps get the first coat of resin applied.


I'm watching this thread closely it's looking great - hoping to nick your plan for our Egyptian uro :gasp:!!


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Evie said:


> I'm watching this thread closely it's looking great - hoping to nick your plan for our Egyptian uro :gasp:!!


Thanks, I'm sure your Egyptian would love it!


I've not had chance to do too much on the viv over the weekend, although the base layer has dried now so it's ready to be attacked with resin. I'll hopefully get a chance to do that later today:












In the meantime, my house is full of little tubs of gloop under various desk lights and other heaters - I'm trying to figure out the best way to create the cracked mud that I want. I'm experimenting with ratios, consistency, colour and drying methods :lol2:





















This is probably the best so far - when dried out, it's completely rock hard, and very hard to even scratch so it should stand up to Zulu. The cracks are nice and deep, and there are plenty of cool "partial cracks". Best of all, that's the natural finish, so if you do scratch away the top layer, there's just more of the same underneath. It's still a little pale for my liking, but I think I'm going in the right direction! :hmm:










Remember, this is my goal:


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## thething84 (Apr 26, 2010)

looking good mate. you really got a good eye for what you want. thinking i should have done a little more planning before starting


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## detail3r (Jul 13, 2010)

Looks very impressive so far:2thumb:

Out of interest what materials and in what rations are you using to create the 'cracked riverbed' substrate?


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

thething84 said:


> looking good mate. you really got a good eye for what you want. thinking i should have done a little more planning before starting


Cheers - it wasn't so much planned as "knocked together in a garage in an afternoon" - the only bit that I've given much though to so far is the riverbed, as that's the main reason for making it :lol2:



detail3r said:


> Looks very impressive so far:2thumb:
> 
> Out of interest what materials and in what rations are you using to create the 'cracked riverbed' substrate?


I've tried various combinations of clays and different types of sand, and still have a few more I want to try.



The best so far came from... 

4 Firing Clay : 2 Kiln-dried Building Sand : 2 Exo Terra "Red Desert Sand" : 3 water. 

All done by weight. 

That was then "fast dried" rather than "slow dried".


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## Dirty_Moose (May 3, 2010)

Thats going to look amazing, only thing I would say is how hard the cracks would be to clean if they get mess down em


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## chulainn (Nov 29, 2009)

looking good


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Dirty_Moose said:


> Thats going to look amazing, only thing I would say is how hard the cracks would be to clean if they get mess down em



They would be a difficulty, although with uromastyx it shouldn't be too bad. Being "ultra-arid" animals, they conserve as much water as they can, so their poos tend to be quite dry and "pellety" - if they can fit down a crack, it should be possible to just vacuum them out, as would be the case with excess substrate or dried greens going down a crack. If part did get a bit messy, it's easy enough to "reset" - in fact, that's my first bit of "news" for today's update!

In nature, a dry, cracked river bed like that would be subjected to repeated "saturation-drying" cycles. I wanted to see whether this would enhance the type of cracks I'm getting, so I re-wetted one of my dried-out test plates to see what would happen. It went back to "gloop" (so nice and easy to remove a section if I need to), but still retained the outline of the cracks. It's now slow-drying, so I'll have to see whether I get better cracks from repeatedly wetting the mixture and allowing it to dry out. It also means it'll be easy enough to reshape the viv if the mud gets too damaged:













I've also started applying the resin and sand coat - this is part of the rock with the first layer on. When it's finished it'll have more texture and will be lighter, but you get the idea. At this stage, the resin follows the contours of the polystyrene base pretty well, although a bit of detail will be lost with subsequent layers - that's why it's important to exaggerate important details when cutting the foam base!










The second layer has also gone onto some of the rocks around the cave, and is now drying under a mountain of sand:













Finally, I had a play about with some left-over resin. I want to give the effect of there being a cracked-mud river bed, with a "silty" bank with rocks sticking out of it. I can do rough sandstone-type rocks, and the cracked mud is coming on nicely, but the smoother, paler, "silty" appearance of the river bank is new ground for me.

Looking back at the base image, it's the stuff on the bank where the bushes are growing:










I've started playing around with paler, much finer additives to the resin to see if I can create something to give that kind of effect. This one looks promising - if nothing else it'll distinguish the "river bank" from the "rocks", rather than it looking like it's all a single lump of rock. It'll mean that the "bank" will be hard (and as far as Zulu's concerned, it'll all be rock), but visually I'm hoping to be able to get a differentiation going on. Given that the viv's going to be lived in rather than just looked at, I don't think it would be possible to maintain the deep, soft upper layer that was actually on the bank (having been there and actually walked around makes a big difference when planning something like this :lol2, but I may be able to get something that looks kind of like it, perhaps in a more hard-packed form. The other option I'm looking at is a finish like that, then "paint" around the rocks with a less-crack-prone version of my "river mud" mixture, to give the impression of the area having previously been briefly flooded with silty water : victory:


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## tiesto (May 6, 2009)

amazing.. that's the only word that comes time mine well that and a few words covered in ***** s :no1:


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Right, another quick update.

I've managed to grab a bit of time to start applying the resin coats - these make it rock hard, waterproof (the all-important bit when it comes to making that dried river bed!), and allow me to give it a sandstone texture.

At the moment most of the resin coats are applied - I need to finish those off, then look at tidying things up a bit, then probably adding some highlights to the rock area. These are "work in progress" shots and look pretty messy - the light "fleckiness" will go from the rocks once I get all of the loose sand out that's partially attached to the resin - this will give me a nice dark-brown textured base colour to highlight up from.

Cave entrance:













Basking area:













"Dry Land" end:













A nice shot showing how the resin coats build up the colour - the rocks on the right are almost finished, whilst those in the middle have only had a mildly-textured base layer of resin:


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## IndigoFire (Apr 11, 2009)

That looks awesome. What lighting you gonna be using? I will be updating all of my vivs at the end of the month when I build my CWD viv. So will be looking into new lighting for my uro...

Cheers
Elliott


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

It's starting to move forwards now - I've finished the resin and have fitted the tree stump and grasses, along with the first layer of cracked mud - it's drying as we speak.

I still need to actually fit the lighting, finish the rocks (highlighting and shading etc), do a bit of general tidying up of edges, and then decide exactly what I'm going to do with the "dry land" area as I'm not happy with how it looks at the moment. I'm thinking possibly loose sand, or some sort of firm, non-cracked sand and clay mixture, possibly along with a few pebbles.

Anyway, this is where it's currently at...



Wet mud added:













With some lights set up to dry the mud and help create the cracking effect:













IndigoFire said:


> That looks awesome. What lighting you gonna be using? I will be updating all of my vivs at the end of the month when I build my CWD viv. So will be looking into new lighting for my uro...


I'll be using the lights in the first post for heat (either with 2 in the basking area, 2 in the basking and one in the cool, or 3 in the basking area, depending on what I end up needing). I'll then be using an Arcadia 12% UV with a reflector fitted to the top of the viv to provide UVB.


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## 6032wayne (Oct 20, 2009)

Amazing looking build, I'm in the process of planning one for my Uro's.

I love the burrow idea, I tried something similar in our viv (nowhere near as well done as yours tbh) but found that both our Uros prefer to wedge themselves into tight spots between shaded rocks.

I was thinking of going for the really rocky Hamada look when we finally upgrade their viv!


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## IndigoFire (Apr 11, 2009)

HadesDragons said:


> I'll be using the lights in the first post for heat (either with 2 in the basking area, 2 in the basking and one in the cool, or 3 in the basking area, depending on what I end up needing). I'll then be using an Arcadia 12% UV with a reflector fitted to the top of the viv to provide UVB.


 
Ah right, how close are you going to be placing the UV tube? I was thinking about adding another UV tube have 1 10% and 1 12% and a MVB. Would this be an overload of UVB and or UVA?


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## bluepoolshark (May 4, 2010)

This is utterly amazing, looking fantastic! :notworthy:


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## GeckoD (May 30, 2010)

This is just a suggestion as ive never tried it and you are bloody good at this cosidering you're covering 'new ground' but Namibia is subjected to some serious heat. Should you not try something that puts out more heat and a nice covering of it such as...a halogen light? we used to use them in the shop before we had any proper lights fitted so we could work round the clock, and they get f**king HOT! If you positioned one directly above about a foot or so away? just something to mill around in the ol' noggin


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## mrhoyo (Mar 29, 2007)

I wish I could be arsed to do something like this


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## Pendragon (Dec 8, 2008)

Looking good, this is the look I'm going for in my Beardie viv, good to see you're doing the leg work on the dried river bed look for me :2thumb:

Jay


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Cheers guys - the mud's drying and cracking nicely but I've not got much else to report - more photos etc soon.




GeckoD said:


> This is just a suggestion as ive never tried it and you are bloody good at this cosidering you're covering 'new ground' but Namibia is subjected to some serious heat. Should you not try something that puts out more heat and a nice covering of it such as...a halogen light? we used to use them in the shop before we had any proper lights fitted so we could work round the clock, and they get f**king HOT! If you positioned one directly above about a foot or so away? just something to mill around in the ol' noggin





HadesDragons said:


> As this is a "fancy" cage, I don't want a big spotlight hanging down. As a result, I'm going to use 2-3 of these to heat the cage. They are nice little halogen spotlights which give out a surprising amount of heat considering they're only 20w each. I use them in smaller baby beardie vivariums, so they should do the trick here. They're also a lot brighter than conventional bulbs. Bright is good when you're dealing with species which live on the fringes of the Sahara!


Nice idea - I'm actually planning on using three of them, either as a two in the hot end one in the cool end, or all three in the hot end : victory: 

One will heat a 3' x 1' beardie viv so three should give me good heat and a good lighting spread. Once turned on they're bright as well. I've not got them fitted yet, but will post some photos once they're all in!


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## bothrops (Jan 7, 2007)

It's looking awesome mate. Can I ask what resin you use and where you source it from? Did you mix sand/soil into the resin directly or do a few coats and then spinkle with sand mix?


Cheers

Andy


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## spatte88 (Jun 29, 2009)

Looking great, I love the naturalistic look of it all! Plus gotta say the tissue paper is a brilliant idea compared to grouting before epoxy, be interesting to see how it fairs over time!


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

I've managed to make some good progress on this over the weekend, to the point it's now nearing completion.

The lighting has been fitted and is being tested, the riverbed mud is just about finished, I've built a riverbank, tidied up the edges and finished the hidebox.

So, onto the photos...


Cool end/Riverbed end:













From the Riverbed looking up the "Riverbank" to the rocks and cave:













Lighting as it currently is - that's an old ReptiGlo 10.0 in there for the time being, until I get a new Arcadia 12% delivered. I may add an extra halogen if needed:













Cracked mud:













Rocks, cave and "swamp grass" - this makes up the hot end and basking area:













Cave entrance - when the lid goes onto the hidebox at the back it's completely dark:














A test with the glass fitted - just need to do a bit of testing and playing around with temperatures, clear the last bit of humidity from the mud and low levels of residual fumes from the rocks and it'll be all ready for Zulu to move in:














It's taken me just over a week to get to this point from this initial photo:










via this scribble:












As most of what's been used in the viv came from reusing stuff I already had laying around the house or packed away in various cupboards, I've spent just under £10 on the build, plus the cost of a new UV tube to come. : victory:






Pendragon said:


> Looking good, this is the look I'm going for in my Beardie viv, good to see you're doing the leg work on the dried river bed look for me :2thumb:


Cheers Jay - I'll look forward to seeing what you can come up with in your viv! If it's anything like the others you've made, I suspect the boundaries are going to pushed even further : victory:



bothrops said:


> It's looking awesome mate. Can I ask what resin you use and where you source it from? Did you mix sand/soil into the resin directly or do a few coats and then spinkle with sand mix?


Thanks Andy. The resin is actually part of an old car body repair kit (minus the fibreglass matting) - like all two-part resins it's nasty stuff until it cures, then it's pretty inert.

I normally do a single "sealing coat" over the entire inside of the viv, then break it down into sections to do the texture coats - you can see in this photo how only one part of the viv actually has texture applied; the rest just has the sealing base coat:










Once I'm onto the texture coats I give it a good covering of sand/soil/clay etc whilst it's still wet. As long as you pile a lot over the resin, it will embed into it, as well as giving a good surface covering.



spatte88 said:


> Looking great, I love the naturalistic look of it all! Plus gotta say the tissue paper is a brilliant idea compared to grouting before epoxy, be interesting to see how it fairs over time!


It's a lot less hassle, and it avoids the problem of the grout absorbing resin for slow-release of fumes; already the viv's close to being "fume free".


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## Pendragon (Dec 8, 2008)

Nice job Andy, mud looks great :2thumb:

Jay


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## cacoonkitty (Aug 10, 2008)

wow this looks amazing..i dont have any desert reps ...yet but want to get some knob tails at hamm so this is the exsact look im going for..i know you have been asked this question but could you p.m me the ingreedients of the cracked mud please... thanks . u can do my viv if you want!!


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## mandi1234 (Mar 13, 2009)

:2thumb:i love it. ooooohhh arent you clever, im sure the resident will be very happy their :2thumb:


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## GallimoreNUFC (Mar 18, 2010)

looks great dude, where did yo buythe grasses from?


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## UK Enclosure Designs (Aug 12, 2010)

stunning build!  you have done a really good job there


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Thanks everyone. I'm still waiting for a couple of bits to arrive, then I'll be moving Zulu in.




GallimoreNUFC said:


> looks great dude, where did yo buythe grasses from?



They started out as a _Carex buchanii_ that some of my beardies managed to kill a few weeks ago. Rather than binning it, I chopped it into little bits and stuck it in the oven to completely dehydrate it - think of it as being similar to coarse hay.


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## xander1796 (May 25, 2009)

i hope you don't mind if i pick your brains on this,i'm trying to do a similar build but with a 10x3x3 tank for my boscs and 1 for my uro dexter, he's only small at the minute so i have time to do both. the tanks are in my album any idea would be appreciated

xander


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

Quick update - Zulu's now moved in! Photos coming soon : victory:




xander1796 said:


> i hope you don't mind if i pick your brains on this,i'm trying to do a similar build but with a 10x3x3 tank for my boscs and 1 for my uro dexter, he's only small at the minute so i have time to do both. the tanks are in my album any idea would be appreciated
> 
> xander


No problem - what do you want to know/what ideas have you had so far?

The resin should stand up to a bosc, but I'd recommend using several coats, with sand embedded in each to give it good strength.


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## xander1796 (May 25, 2009)

well the tanks gonna be rained of the ground about 6 inches and there'll be a kitchen sink in it with piping running out and under so i can clean it without having to rip it out all the time. 2 level , the 1st being like your dry riverbed with a raise then dip down for a hide that'll also be lowered into the floor. (loved that idea when i saw your tank). the 2nd level being more for climbing but with two very large ledges that can hold an adult bosc.

the problems i'm having are they do love to climb but they have destroyed already in this short time so many ideas like the foam which the tear apart with ease even when it was covered. sand! one seems to take eye infections around it..ahhhh!! and lastly heating, there will be 3 large solar glo bulbs and a uv strip all dimming at night but i'm worried the foam and sand mix might make the tank too hot for them. the uro loves it and his tank is looking awesome.

i just don't wanna mess this up, i have 2 joiners and a plumber helping with this but none of them can understand what we are trying to do here. oh yeah last but not least the backround image is a blown up copy of a picture i took in 2001 in iraq, with the hills and sunset etc. i think i've maybe taken on too big a job :gasp:


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

xander1796 said:


> well the tanks gonna be rained of the ground about 6 inches and there'll be a kitchen sink in it with piping running out and under so i can clean it without having to rip it out all the time.
> 
> Sounds like a nice plan - just have a think about how you'll be keeping the plug in though - a beardie can pull one out, so I wouldn't have thought a bosc would have any difficulty! Possibly some sort of valve immediately after the plug hole (so if the plug does come out, the sink won't empty), or some sort of catch to hold the plug in place? Perhaps even a bathroom sink with one of the "stick-operated" plug holes, with something covering the "stick" so the bosc doesn't have access to it?
> 
> ...


I've added a couple of ideas/observations in red - might be worth thinking about?

If it was me I'd start with the uro tank first as it's a much smaller job - that way you can get a feel for the capabilities of yourself, the foam and the resin on a simpler project. Once you've got a feel for what works, what doesn't and what's possible, you can then work out how feasible the ideas you've had for the bosc cage are going to be. : victory:


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## xander1796 (May 25, 2009)

i've printed this off cos i loked at your ideas and thought wow! i will be taking all of this on board.

when i start to design and build i'll email across drawings and pics so we can discusss but after seeing the like for the dragons tank i'm well impressed

thanks again mate


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