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By Marty at 10/08/2007 - 14:21
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Click on individual tanks to enlarge
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Here's the story of my vivarium rack construction. It took me a while to figure things out and to plan everything, so there would be no surprises later. You can click on the images to get larger views. Warning, there's are a lot of images in this post, so be patient if you have a slower connection. I made this rack with several key ideas in mind. I wanted to create as maintenance free setup as possible. I didn't want to become a slave of my own hobby and keep maintaining my tanks constantly. At the same time I wanted to have as close of a habitat replication as possible. This was my dream list... I wanted it all ! Even though this rack setup has been created for dartfrogs, I'm sure some of you may find a lot of the elements useful when building your geckos setups.
- Automated Misting System. Misting several times per day, for less then 1 minute per misting cycle
- Worry free draining. When there is too much water from all the misting, I wanted all 10 tanks to take care of themselves
- Ventilation - I wanted high humidity (90%+), yet I wanted to see everything inside without any fog on the front
- Full view, I didn't want to see any hinges or latches or anything else in the fronts of the tanks obstructing the views of the vivarium. No door in the front.
- My misting system had to be maintenance free, I didn't want to keep adding water to it, or worry that it will run dry - ever !
- Some type of a feeding door, so I wouldn't have to open the front to feed the frogs. It would save them some stress and reduce possibility of escape and make things easier for me.
- Keeping the cleaning of the front glass to a minimum
- Lights on a timer - no brainer here
I felt that I had my work cut out for myself. I started off with researching what has been done before and it dawned on me that it will not be as simple as initially thought, especially with all the bells and whistles that I wanted. I decided early on, that there will be no compromises. If I am to do a half ass job, I better not do it at all. Some things were done here and there, but I didn't see much of a blueprint for what I wanted.
I had my wheels spinning and there was a lot of napkin drawing. After few months of sleeping on it and improving the design in my head, I felt confident that I could finally begin. I came up with a design for my cubes. Material of choice was 1/4" acrylic. I figured that once I have all my tanks done, I can then proceed to the next step. Thankfully, I had a friend who's a professional acrylic fabricator. He made all the tanks.
It's now obvious why I chose acrylic. We tweaked the design a bit and created a ventilation shaft near the bottom. More on ventilation later. Once I had all the tanks done I could then proceed to the next step and actually start building the rack itself. By the way, my wife's look was priceless when she came to find 10 tanks spread out on the floor. I'm sure the thought "What the hell is he up to now !!! " went through her head :)
Since one day I may have to take the rack to a different house when we move, I had to create it in few pieces, so it could be disassembled and moved easily. This was also the key to bring it to the basement, otherwise we'd have to build it there.
Notches were cut in between the tanks to allow for placement of the fans. Later the power cords will be hidden away. Fans were 1" thick. I found some wood that was a bit over 1". It worked nicely.
That's the ventilation channel. The idea here is that the fan will push air along the channel and it will create a vacuum pulling more air from the vivarium. Since the only place where the air can come from is right above the front glass, through a meshed slit along the door, the air will slowly be drawn down along the width and height of the front window constantly defogging the front while having very little effect on the rest of the tank. All the fans will be controlled via a small panel with potentiometers, so the speed can be adjusted as needed.
These are the two outter sections. There will still be a small section that will hold the two middle tanks.
Finally the moment came where we could actually put the rack into the basement. Doors are ordered, should arrive soon. All the tanks are now equipped with a misting system from Mist King.com. The room was also prepped for the tank. Fortunately for me, room on the left is the laundry!!! Few months back, I had to rig it for washer and dryer and move some plumbing around. At that time made a drain connection to my frog room, which is hidden behind the rack. It's basically a slanted ABS pipe that runs along the whole wall of the rack and it has multiple ports to which I can attach drain hoses. Maintenance free draining is now complete!
One of the features that I'm especially proud is the way the bottom tanks work. Since the tanks have no doors, the way to open them is to slide the front window up. If top and bottom were in line, that would not be possible for the bottom tanks. The entire lower row of tanks had to protrude forward a few inches. This created a ledge in between the tanks. I now find the ledge very useful.
The ledge other then serving as a shelf, is also made with two hinges. One piano hinge, which enables me to flip it up and slide the front of bottom tank up.
It also has a 2nd hinge, which flips the whole folded ledge up and lets me look at the lights and to open the small door/hutch through which I can feed the frogs without opening the entire tank. This hinge was inspired by the blind corner hinge in my kitchen :)
Several weeks later, most of the tanks are almost completed. I used clay pebbles as a substrate. Backing is made with polyurethane foam (called "great stuff" for sealing cracks). ON top of that is a mix of weldbond glue and peat moss and small chunks of palm tree. More on that later.
Now with lights off. I also used java moss on the backs of the tanks, Misters spray it and it grows like a weed. The lights used in this rack are six 55W compact fluorescent. Three on top and three on the bottom. Two middle tanks still need to be finished. I left those until the end, because I wanted to do waterfall features. Specifically, I wanted to create an illusion that the waterfall in the top tank was flowing into the bottom tank. Here's the construction of the bottom tank.
I wanted the water to come and flow over a rock. Suspending a real rock was out of the question because of the weight issue. I found a neat and realistic solution... at Petsmart out of all the places :). I bought a fake rock that is used in aquariums. They're very realistic looking and perfect for my application.
I only needed one side of the rock as I had to run some tubing through it... plus why waste the whole rock? With my reciprocating saw, I split it in half.
I then mounted the rock the way I wanted the water to flow and ran a hose inside the rock. I also ran the pump through the back of the tank. Unfortunately I had to cut the plug off, but oh well. Everything is held in place with polyurethane foam
Layer of dirt mix on top of it. Three weeks of drying and it's ready to be planted. I like to put a sheet of heavy duty landscaping fabric on top of the clay pebbles.
That's how the rock waterfall turned out. Of course, looks a bit dull with no growth and algae etc, but it's a start, and as a fake rock, I think it looks great !
Freshly planted tank. It's all done. Water flows without trouble. Now all it needs is time to grow over.
Same tank, about a year later. Shortly after prooning. It was much more overgrown.
It's a messy job to set up a new viv... Stuff all over the place, but it has to get worse before it will get better... After this, only one more left ! Not looking forward to it, but it has to get done.
Ventilation works like so. Numbers indicate fans. Top and bottom fans between the same tanks are controlled by the same potentiometer. Each fan works at a different speed from left to right, so the fan to the right has to be able to remove the air supplied by the previous fan, plus is has to pull a bit more to create additional vacuum to defog the tank that it's working on. This goes for all the fans, so from left to right, fans pick up speed and flow and thus defog all the tanks at the same rate. I keep the fans running at the threshold of fog/no fog to maximize the humidity inside
Here's to show you how well the ventilation shaft works. In the middle of the 'alanis' tank the humidity is at 91%, while the front glass is 100% fog free.
Next was the misting system. One of my objectives was to keep the front from fogging up, but also to keep cleaning of the front sliding door to a minimum. This would be done with reverse osmosis (RO) water. Since RO water has all the minerals removed, if there is any overspray onto the front, it will dry clear without leaving any waterspots. Just what the good doctor ordered ! I installed a Reverse Osmosis filter under the laundry sink and had it collect water to a pressurized 5gal tank in the laundry. I then ran 3/8" tubing to a 2nd tank which was located in my frog room. This would give me 10gal of RO water in the reservoir. As the pressure drops in the tanks, they automatically 'top up'. I connected the supply tank in the frog room to a solenoid valve and to a pump, which then fed an 11 port manifold. 10 ports went to individual tanks, and the 11 port went to another 100 gal viv. Looking back, I should have used all black tubing. It would look nicer. Algae growth is not a problem, even with the clear tubing passing just a few inches from the compact lights, as the water has nothing in it
This is the early setup picture. I later moved the 2nd tank to the laundry room and installed a little faucet. It's handy to have RO water there. I also split the tubing and I have a movable RO waterhose to spray things around in the vivs. Comes in handy to top up bromeliads or wash off crap from the sides. Since the tanks are drained, I don't have to worry about overfilling the cubes...I just spray away and the excess drains away.
These are the misting nozzles I came up with for this project. You can get a much more improved model at MistKing.com with nice black bulkheads and black tubing. These don't look as nice, but work just as well.
That's the left side of the finished rack
This is the right side.
Overall I'm very happy with the way things turned out. Individual tanks have great microclimate and the whole setup is virtually maintenance free. I can throw in a bunch of food and leave for 10 days without a problem. Things take care of themselves and frogs breed like mad. The best investment I made was in having the tanks drained. I can make it rain as much as I want and other then frogs breeding for me there are no consequences.
The whole rack with all the tanks completed. Feel free to post any comments. To see the individual tanks, scroll to the very top and click on the tank you'd like to see in more detail.
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I need to invest in a diamond drill bit for glass. might make a good addition to the tool bench and use for other terrariums.
-jason
I wish I knew how to put something like that together and get all the plants to survive and everything, All my bromeliads I have kept always rot away at the base over time and they die, then my ficus trees always drop there leaves. Pothos is the only plant I can keep in the cages and have it do well.
But just overall, the whole thing is just WOW!!!
If you don't mind me asking, how much did it cost to build it?
Thanks Derek
for the fear that my wife will read this post, I won't say how much it cost me...hehehe... no actually wasn't that bad...maybe $3K - but that's with a lot of favours that I pulled, incl a lot of IT work for the acrylic guy.
I need to invest in a diamond drill bit for glass. might make a good addition to the tool bench and use for other terrariums.
-jason
awesome job
Do you have any photos of the back side of the tank where the drains are attached?
I already have a nice size glass shop at my place and about 5 tons of glass to finish using before i move again in January.
Cheers
Jason P
BTW I've found that light makes the biggest diffence with ficus leaf die off even all the book say it's water related. Bromiliad base rot for me seems to be from too much localized water (not talking about in the cup) even when the air might be dry.
note to self: demod Ethan
Matt
great job, man!
Tom
I wish I knew how to put something like that together and get all the plants to survive and everything, All my bromeliads I have kept always rot away at the base over time and they die, then my ficus trees always drop there leaves. Pothos is the only plant I can keep in the cages and have it do well.
But just overall, the whole thing is just WOW!!!
If you don't mind me asking, how much did it cost to build it?
Thanks Derek
to keep the ficus alive and in full leaf, put it in one position/spot and don't even touch it. If you so much as move it a 1/4 turn it will drop leaves. I found that keeping temp, humidity and dampness of soil fairly constant keeps mine really happy. It did drop pretty much all its leaves after I decorated it with X-mas lights and left them on too long..LOL. It's making a come back and will soon be looking for a new home...getting too big for my display.
Hi Marty,
I'm green with envy, and going to study my little set up to see what I can change for the better. After seeing your set up mine looks really bland. Any ideas for desert type viv? I have leopard geckos btw I've only had since Sept. 07, so I'm a newbie with reptiles really. Any suggestions greatly appreciated about tank design.
Thanks Melanie