my weekend warrior project, 125G paludarium

[deranged chipmunk]

after substrate, i should have roughly 6" of water. so i am thinking either some cardinal tetras and bristlenose plecos, or (and this is probably the route i am going), shrimp and otocinclus. and all my pics are taken with my phone. it actually takes better pics than my ancient camera...LOL

[kmichael55]

Cool! also learned a new word... paludarium. I like it.
Can't wait to see it completed!!

[deranged chipmunk]

I might have an update tonight. All depends on whether or not i feel like inhaling silicone fumes after inhaling them at work all day. I'm only siliconing the submerged section, the land portion will be done with titebond III wood glue. I was going to do it this weekend, but i ran out of gloves, so i just waited until returning to work today to "appropriate " some.

[deranged chipmunk]

update: built the water feature for the left side of the tank. made it completely removable for maintenance reasons. learned a few things this past weekend as well. while water testing the water feature, i filled the tank to it's planned water level, and guess what i found out? the whole land area floats!! dumb me, should have figured it would, since it IS all polyurethane foam. like trying to sink a giant rice crispy....lol anyway, i added 4lbs of lead fishing sinkers to the inside of the land mass. i'm in the middle of covering it with coco coir, so i will hopefully test to see if this is enough weight over the upcoming weekend. now for the pics:
prep work: in order to keep the foam from sticking, i covered the area i was working in in plastic wrap, which worked brilliantly :-)


this is the top of my water feature, water enters through the tube and exits upon overflow. the reason for the cup is because the ultrasonic foggers work on vibration and they spout up some water, this is my attempt to curb having a fog volcano. LOL

water feature foamed up and ready for carving:


a couple of views if the water feature out of the tank:



here's a couple pics after carving and after a bit of coco coir on it:


i will try to update earlier next week, i just got caught up in my own little Doctor Who marathon this week....lol
oh, i also built the right section of land and another piece that i built to creat the effect of a stream (hopefully). i will post pics of those next week

[Adam R]

nice idea for the waterfall.

when you get a chance, i updated mine as well with some plants

[kmichael55]

Looking good!

[deranged chipmunk]

#13
Fishies_in_Philly Wannabe Guru (View User Tanks) PTrader: (7/100%) Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: phila., PA Posts: 1,529	ok, been a bit since i updated, actually got a lot accomplished. i'll just let the pics do the talking. current plant inventory.....adding more tomorrow. you can just see my grow out tank for my planted tanks.