LET THE PHOTO DUMPING BEGIN!

8/15-16/18
SO I spent all of yesterday draining and scraping all the mineral deposits (we have hard water) and dried algae off the tank then cleaned up the silicone edges a bit (no photos).

Today I took the pvc pieces my husband pre-made for me way back for the 40g build and siliconed them into the 55g. They are 1 1/2" tubes about 2" tall with small holes drilled into the bottom to let water through.


Cut egg crate (light diffuser from home depot) to size then covered in weed block mesh and zip ties.. for some reason my local home depot only had this in grey, not black.. Also made a drain pipe for water changes and made a large opening with wider lid so I can put a heater in the water below.


That took about 2 1/2-3 hours to get done.
Now I get to wait 48+ hours to let silicone cure before I move on.
I fortunately bought substrate way back for the last vivarium prep so I'm covered there.. just have to get spring tails.. maybe isopods (its really sad that my spell check triers to change this to "ipod") and substrate, put micro fauna, plants, and driftwood into tank... oh and go by home improvement store again for some Lexan (i don't trust myself with glass >.> ) to make a new lid and get a humidity/temp display I can slap in the tank.

Will post more updates as things happen..

For now I leave you with a quick snap of a find I didn't expect to see locally in a crappy diy humidity chamber. Take a guess at which fern species it is!