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Thread: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

  1. #1
    100+ Post Member Larry Wardog's Avatar
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    Default Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Bill said this will help others learn haha, I am making this because I would like to put a small waterfall in my enclosure. I would like to have a small water flow running down the tank and eventually meet a drop off that the water collects at. I have plenty of rocks to make this happen but I'm not doing it until I know what I'm doing because of how great the tank is doing. I think this will look way better than the little container I have. I have 2 leopard frogs and would like to have a deep enough spill way that they are happy and can swim/hide in the water. The soil is around 4-5 inches deep, if it's worth anything. I have 2 American Toads and it can't be converted to water because they won't be happy. I'm trying to find a middle man so to speak. Hope some responses come in. Thanks


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    Moderator Jenste's Avatar
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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    I did this in my 72 gallon bow for my Fire Belly Toads when they ruled the tank (since converted back to a full aquatic set up for the ACF).

    I am awful at describing the steps so if it is confusing just ask me and I will clarify what I did lol...it was a trial and error thing for me.

    1) I have a canister filter and I had the intake below the water line on the right hand side and I the outflow for the water fall aspect on the left hand side (for your visual purposes).

    2) I took a large plastic critter keeper tank and submersed it in water then turned it upside down on the left hand side of the tank (to be under the outflow). (Figured it would weigh less than stacking a huge amount of rocks/sand).
    I then built up the sand to cover the critter keeper and it made a nice sloping into the water "pond" area of my tank. (the right hand side with the intake for the filter)

    3) Now, for the waterfall part, I needed to make a channel for the water that wouldn't erode away. (like sand)
    I cut off the ends of a plastic soda bottle then cut it in half (so I had a long half tube), lined it with a plastic freezer bag that I used rocks and substrate to hide the extra bag on both sides of the tube (Think of like a pond liner with the bottle as the pond shell).
    I used the two halves of the bottle (Trimmed to make fit my needs) to make it the length I wanted to reach the "pond area".
    I surrounded both sides of the tubing with sand and rocks like a river bed and it helped camoflague the soda bottle/plastic bag area.
    With in the tube I used a series of rocks to hold down / hide the bottle/bag channel.

    4) In the "pond" area I had a lot of aquatic plants in the water column (like amazon swords etc), in the back of the pond area I had pots of pothos plants that grew through out the tank - the stems would suspend themselves in the water for the frogs to climb on or hold on to, and I had a large piece of driftwood so they could climb/perch when ever they wanted.



    This was the end result -
    The pictures are not a tutorial but I figured it could help . (I also had guppies and neons for a while in the water column - they had about 20-25 gallons of water or so and lots of live plants)





    Frogs in the waterfall stream, again I had rocks around so they could either sit fully in the water or partially in the water.





    End of the waterfall channel where it poured into the "pond" (I used some larger rocks as I didn't want a strong current pushing the frogs around when they wanted to sit in the stream)







    Pond area

    72 Gallon Bow - ACF and GF tank.
    26 Gallon Bow - ACF tank.

    20 Gallon Long - ACF tank.


    "If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty. But the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it." C.S. Lewis, Four Loves, 1958

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  5. #3

    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    That looks fantastic Jen!! There ya go. There's one way to do it. You can also do it with a false bottom and a pump hidden underneath, or even a pump hidden inside the drainage layer (my personal fav), wrapped in filter foam. Remember, for those tanks that have pumps under the substrate, to leave access to the pump for when it needs to be repaired/replaced. They always do. Lol. The upside to Jen's method is the canister. Easily maintained, but takes a little more ingenuity to hide stuff, unless you are fearless and don't mind drilling the tank, which is easy, by the way.


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    Default Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Quote Originally Posted by Jenste View Post
    I did this in my 72 gallon bow for my Fire Belly Toads when they ruled the tank (since converted back to a full aquatic set up for the ACF).

    I am awful at describing the steps so if it is confusing just ask me and I will clarify what I did lol...it was a trial and error thing for me.

    1) I have a canister filter and I had the intake below the water line on the right hand side and I the outflow for the water fall aspect on the left hand side (for your visual purposes).

    2) I took a large plastic critter keeper tank and submersed it in water then turned it upside down on the left hand side of the tank (to be under the outflow). (Figured it would weigh less than stacking a huge amount of rocks/sand).
    I then built up the sand to cover the critter keeper and it made a nice sloping into the water "pond" area of my tank. (the right hand side with the intake for the filter)

    3) Now, for the waterfall part, I needed to make a channel for the water that wouldn't erode away. (like sand)
    I cut off the ends of a plastic soda bottle then cut it in half (so I had a long half tube), lined it with a plastic freezer bag that I used rocks and substrate to hide the extra bag on both sides of the tube (Think of like a pond liner with the bottle as the pond shell).
    I used the two halves of the bottle (Trimmed to make fit my needs) to make it the length I wanted to reach the "pond area".
    I surrounded both sides of the tubing with sand and rocks like a river bed and it helped camoflague the soda bottle/plastic bag area.
    With in the tube I used a series of rocks to hold down / hide the bottle/bag channel.

    4) In the "pond" area I had a lot of aquatic plants in the water column (like amazon swords etc), in the back of the pond area I had pots of pothos plants that grew through out the tank - the stems would suspend themselves in the water for the frogs to climb on or hold on to, and I had a large piece of driftwood so they could climb/perch when ever they wanted.



    This was the end result -
    The pictures are not a tutorial but I figured it could help . (I also had guppies and neons for a while in the water column - they had about 20-25 gallons of water or so and lots of live plants)





    Frogs in the waterfall stream, again I had rocks around so they could either sit fully in the water or partially in the water.





    End of the waterfall channel where it poured into the "pond" (I used some larger rocks as I didn't want a strong current pushing the frogs around when they wanted to sit in the stream)







    Pond area

    Thank you, that was so in depth. I will study this and look more into it. The run off you had where the FBTs were, would be great for the American Toads. My Myrtle would take the place of the pothos in this tank because I still want to do this with naive plants and animals still. It should work. I have a small pump now but no tubing. I probably could get a tetra fauna turtle pump or 2 at Petco for below $50 so it's not a big deal to me. I like the idea of using the bottles to lead the water to a run off, that would be really easy because my mom always buys tons of bottled water. I could use the empty bottles to do what you said. I will have to look at this some more and take it in haha, I will post back soon. Thanks Bill, I have a few ways to do this and I'm looking forward to doing this, I think it will be taking my tank to the next level so to speak. I think this will also make it look more natural and will benefit the enclosure as a whole. Thank you guys, this makes me very excited! If anybody has other examples or input, please post!


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  9. #5

    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    See? This is exactly why I said to make a new post

    Btw, you can get tubing at Home Depot or lowes very cheap. It's less than $10 for most common sizes for about 20 feet or so.

    Another item you could use for your stream, besides bottles (or pond liner), is those hamster trail tube thingies. Some are actually 2 pieces. You can heat them gently, and contour them to give the stream a bit of crookedness, for lack of a real word lol a bottle wouldn't survive the heating. Oh, a disclaimer: anytime you use one of Bill's psychotic ideas, like heating and bending plastic, ALWAYS use precautionary safety measures. Just because I am stupid, doesn't mean you have to be


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    0.0.2 Dendrobates Tinctorius 'Powder Blue'
    0.0.2 Ranitomeya Variabilis 'southern'
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  11. #6
    100+ Post Member Larry Wardog's Avatar
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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Yes, I will need to clean this tank eventually, it's only been together since June 4th really, so there is still a few months before I want to really change it. Since everything is going so well, I don't want to tamper with it. I know I will in the upcoming months but as for now, I'm just sitting back and enjoying my creation. It's an actual ecosystem! I'm glad I have a lot of little bins laying around because I'll need them for the insects and such when I decide it's time to. If you look at the plants I have already, the Myrtle, Ferns, or English Daisy would do great in or right next to the stream. I may even be able to have a couple minnows it's possible with this setup. I will look more into the water bottles or pond liner, my mom might have liner left from years ago. Sorry Bill haha, I may still need to wear the glasses though


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    100+ Post Member Larry Wardog's Avatar
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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Ok so I actually got a 6 ft long by 4 ft wide pond liner today at work for $5 (boss is a good guy) so I am going to line some of the tank and my mom found another filter so I'm thinking of trying a pump going down and a pump coming up. I'm still a month or 2 away from attempting this but I have an idea for it. Would the pond liner be good to have above from the drainage layer? I mean putting my soil and everything on it instead of on the other stuff I've used prior. I think this is going to look so cool if I manage to do it right! I will have a lot of happier animals!


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  13. #8

    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Quote Originally Posted by Jenste View Post
    I did this in my 72 gallon bow for my Fire Belly Toads when they ruled the tank (since converted back to a full aquatic set up for the ACF).

    I am awful at describing the steps so if it is confusing just ask me and I will clarify what I did lol...it was a trial and error thing for me.

    1) I have a canister filter and I had the intake below the water line on the right hand side and I the outflow for the water fall aspect on the left hand side (for your visual purposes).

    2) I took a large plastic critter keeper tank and submersed it in water then turned it upside down on the left hand side of the tank (to be under the outflow). (Figured it would weigh less than stacking a huge amount of rocks/sand).
    I then built up the sand to cover the critter keeper and it made a nice sloping into the water "pond" area of my tank. (the right hand side with the intake for the filter)

    3) Now, for the waterfall part, I needed to make a channel for the water that wouldn't erode away. (like sand)
    I cut off the ends of a plastic soda bottle then cut it in half (so I had a long half tube), lined it with a plastic freezer bag that I used rocks and substrate to hide the extra bag on both sides of the tube (Think of like a pond liner with the bottle as the pond shell).
    I used the two halves of the bottle (Trimmed to make fit my needs) to make it the length I wanted to reach the "pond area".
    I surrounded both sides of the tubing with sand and rocks like a river bed and it helped camoflague the soda bottle/plastic bag area.
    With in the tube I used a series of rocks to hold down / hide the bottle/bag channel.

    4) In the "pond" area I had a lot of aquatic plants in the water column (like amazon swords etc), in the back of the pond area I had pots of pothos plants that grew through out the tank - the stems would suspend themselves in the water for the frogs to climb on or hold on to, and I had a large piece of driftwood so they could climb/perch when ever they wanted.



    This was the end result -
    The pictures are not a tutorial but I figured it could help . (I also had guppies and neons for a while in the water column - they had about 20-25 gallons of water or so and lots of live plants)





    Frogs in the waterfall stream, again I had rocks around so they could either sit fully in the water or partially in the water.





    End of the waterfall channel where it poured into the "pond" (I used some larger rocks as I didn't want a strong current pushing the frogs around when they wanted to sit in the stream)







    Pond area

    Love this setup! My little guys are looking over my shoulder and turning green with envy. ;-)

    I have some work to do but this definitely helps with my vision too.

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  14. #9

    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Quote Originally Posted by Larry Wardog View Post
    Ok so I actually got a 6 ft long by 4 ft wide pond liner today at work for $5 (boss is a good guy) so I am going to line some of the tank and my mom found another filter so I'm thinking of trying a pump going down and a pump coming up. I'm still a month or 2 away from attempting this but I have an idea for it. Would the pond liner be good to have above from the drainage layer? I mean putting my soil and everything on it instead of on the other stuff I've used prior. I think this is going to look so cool if I manage to do it right! I will have a lot of happier animals!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    I would put the pond liner above the drainage layer and partially covering the soil or else the water will just drain into the soil and get all messy, rather than cascade down the rocks as you want it....right? Anyone? Bueller?

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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Yeah, I was going to have the pond liner above the drainage layer at a slight slope. I am going to use some for the top, this would be for the stream.


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  16. #11

    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Quote Originally Posted by Larry Wardog View Post
    Yeah, I was going to have the pond liner above the drainage layer at a slight slope. I am going to use some for the top, this would be for the stream.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Exactly what I was planning too. The trick as I see it is to keep it from leaching into the soil and hiding the liner enough to look natural. I might try this in a couple weeks when I figure out how I'm going to enlarge my pond area and reduce the land portion.

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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    If you put soil anywhere near where you are channeling the run off from the waterfall, the soil is going to get washed out into the "pond area" - Have soil surrounding a gravel/rock bed and have the water channeled to flow over the rocks. Otherwise you are going to go crazy netting out the soil from the water and fixing bald patches. This is why I made the "stream" out of the plastic soda bottles so it would curve down for depth and used the liner over it with rocks to hold everything in place and disguise what I did underneath. I used sand on each side of my stream rather than soil but if I had just sand in the stream itself it would have all been washed out into the pond area with in moments of turning on the water.
    72 Gallon Bow - ACF and GF tank.
    26 Gallon Bow - ACF tank.

    20 Gallon Long - ACF tank.


    "If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty. But the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it." C.S. Lewis, Four Loves, 1958

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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Yes, I'm going to make the stream and have river rocks in it and camouflage it. I'm just having a hard time explaining it haha


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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    So I did put a small stream into my Vivarium. It was made possible with a 150-300 Gallon pump and long tubing running down the Vivarium that is hidden. I will get a pic soon.


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  21. #15

    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    Where's that pic?

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    Default Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    I'm going to be honest, I liked it for a little bit, but I just don't like how much room it takes up in the tank. I have a video on YouTube of it. Look up "75 Gallon PA Woods Vivarium" I am going to take it out with the next build. But I am going to use it for my Whites, that will be in the 75 Gallon as well. So I will post it on here. It's going to be a while.


    *just stating that the animals in it now will be in a 120/125 gallon next; the WTFs will be moved in after it's all cleaned and etc.


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    Default Re: Waterfall in 75 Gallon

    I am considering getting a 75 gallon (18L x 48W x 20H) for my Patricias. Part of my thought process is to have a false bottom raised about 4 inches off the tank's bottom. This would allow me to add a small and shallow pond area with a small wandering stream that would be "powered" using ReptoFilter aquarium filter, normally used for turtles. Theoretically, the filter will not only provide a means of moving the water but keep the water "clean". I would camouflage/hide it within terrain. I am curious as to why the half-bottles were covered in sandwich bags. I kind of like the idea of using hamster tubes. I would add 3/8 inch clear tubing to change / drain water as necessary.

    Thoughts??

    John
    I don't know what I don't know and can't fix something unless I know its broken.

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