Speaker: Today, I am getting started on the next step for the vivarium project. I have all the parts I need now to put in the substrate and the two main pieces of hardscape that are going to make up the foundation for how everything inside this is going to look. Let’s get started.
Speaker: The first tasks are prepare the substrate materials for vivarium. I chose Hydroton for the drainage layer. I like this heat-expanded clay ball because it is relatively light, but it is also very dusty and needs a good rinse. The planting layer would be ABG Mix I bought from Josh’s Frogs. This is my first order from Josh’s. The transaction was easy and delivery was fast even in this time of delays due to the coronavirus.
I do appreciate that Josh’s was able to get the order out so quickly. I also like that this ABG does not come pre-mixed for a couple of reasons. First, I can see the proportions of the materials in the mix. Second, I believe that you can overmix ABG and a lot of mixed substrates. By mixing it myself, I can be more gentle with it. I also bought the Josh’s Frogs Bioactive Booster.
There are no instructions on the jar or on the website for how much to use specifically. I hope this is enough or not too much. I like to add a little bit of water to the mix as I blend it, but only just enough to make it less dusty. The water that I’m using is reverse osmosis water, so I’m not adding any kind of salts or minerals into the substrate. I’m going to cap the ABG with a layer of long-fiber sphagnum moss.
Say that six times fast. This requires a lot of water to hydrate, but I prefer to spray it than to dunk it because wringing the excess water out can also crush the fibers a bit, at least in my experience. Eventually, I’ll also add a layer of leaf litter on top of the sphagnum moss, but not until after I plant the first plants, so I’m not going to prepare those now. I also need to prepare the interior of the planters and the top of the universal rocks tree trunk.
I am going to put a bunch of Hydroton in the bottom of this thing, but those drainage hoses are one-half-inch diameter, so the Hydroton can actually get down it. To keep them from getting blocked up with Hydroton, I’m going to put in some foam to cover the tops of those drainage holes. I’m going to have to fill quite a bit of the space with the Hydroton drainage material.
I probably should have made the chamber a lot smaller, but it is too late now and I’m going to fill some of the extra space in the middle with foam. What I’m going to end up with is basically two separate chambers. What I am not going to do is fill up the rest of the space with ABG Mix. When I put plants in it, I’m actually going to use these. This is a mesh bag that has got a little bit of Hydroton on the bottom and then it’s got ABG on the top.
It’s a wide-enough mesh that I’ll be able to stick stems and roots of plants into the mesh and then just sit at the very, very top. Before I plant this, I’m going to fill a whole lot of things to empty the space. Even when I do plant it, I’m going to be able to pick the plants in and out of it pretty easily. When we actually get to the point of planting these chambers, I’ll show you how I did that with the mesh bags.
Now, it is time to put the substrate into the vivarium. The drainage layer goes in first, about two and a half inches of Hydroton. The drainage layer should probably be closer to four inches thick, but I do not have that much depth to work with because of the vents in the back of the custom cage’s enclosure. If I want any depth in the planting layer at all, I need to sacrifice a thicker drainage layer.
The drainage layer is going to be covered by a soil barrier to prevent the particles of the planting layer from filtering into the drainage layer and plugging it up. This is a solid sheet of one and a half-inch thick, 20 PPI Poret foam that I get from SwissTropicals. Poret is great stuff because it’s made from a material that is totally inert in water. It will never rot or degrade like reticulated foams will.
The ABG planting layer goes in next. I am sloping this layer from the edges up into the middle. I do not want the soil to be too high on the side windows. I do not intend to plant tall plants right up against the panes. I want to be able to see into the vivarium. I do not need a thick planting layer at the edges, but I am mounting it up in the middle. Once the ABG planting layer is in, it is capped to the thin layer of long-fiber sphagnum moss. I need more of it.
I will get some and add it when I put plants into the enclosure. Now, the substrate is in, I can move on to the fun stuff, hardscape. Guess what, guys? I’ve got a selection of hardscape that I’m going to be putting into this enclosure. I’ve got some nice smaller pieces of wood that all match in color and type. They’re kind of close to this large piece that’s going to be a piece on that side of it. I’ll show you how it fits in in just a sec.
The other thing I’ve got are these vines. Now, these are made with rope. Let’s take a quick timeout and I’ll show you how I made these vines. Another thing that I needed to do for this project is to create vines that I’m going to glue or adhere to that universal rocks blog. To do that, I’m going to use a system that a lot of people do. You take some rope and you cover it with silicone, and then you’re going to glue on peat moss and other organics onto it to make it a real vine.
This is peat moss. I actually put some long-fiber sphagnum moss in it because I like my vines to be a little bit brushy, a little shrubby. Also, to help do that, I’ll also prepare my rope a little bit. This is a piece that’s built ready to go. You’ll notice that it’s not a nice, straight, long piece of rope. It’s actually got a lot of phrase and things pulled out of it. When these get covered with peat moss, they’re going to look like little roots and things that are coming out through the side.
The way I do that, I’ve got three different diameters of rope here. The way I do that is I take a rope that I’ve just cut to length. I take a razor blade and about every three or four inches. I’ll do it evenly. I rotate the rope a little bit. I’m not cutting the same strands. I’m cutting down sometimes halfway through, sometimes only just a little teeny bit. All I’m going to do is I’m going to loosen it.
Now, I do like to take the ends and really free them up because that’s a lot easier to hide in your enclosure than a flat end. I just start unwinding the rope. Wherever I’ve cut, we usually spring out. Maybe I’ll unwind that for half an inch. Maybe I’ll unwind it for a full-inch or even longer. I’ll just keep twisting it. Now, let it go back to being rope. I don’t really want it to come completely unfrayed. I just want those places that I’ve cut it to loosen up a little bit and create some randomness in the vine itself.
I feel like I’ve gone a long time without having a piece I should have unfrayed. I’ll just cut a little bit of it and unfray it. One thing to consider also when you are cutting rope for your vines, always cut them longer than what you’re going to need them for. One, you don’t want the vines going straight lines in your enclosure, so there’s going to be some undulation in them.
You can always make a vine shorter. You can’t really make it longer. There, all right. There’s another one. I got a few more of those to do and then we’ll get to the siliconing and putting the peat moss on it. I apply silicone and peat moss to the rope vines in two applications. The first application is on each individual rope. I wad up the prepared rope and apply a very liberal amount of silicone.
I am using clear silicone today, but I bet that the black silicone would actually look really good, especially if you want to hide the color of the rope more completely or have a very dark vine. I tried to get the rope completely covered with silicone. If there are any dry spots, it will be okay. My system will get two rounds of silicone and peat, then I roll the rope in a tub full of very dry peat and long-fiber sphagnum moss.
Dry is very important. When the rope is sufficiently covered, I gently pull it out, barely shake off the access, and then set it aside to cure overnight. Here is my pile of rope vines that will cure overnight and it’ll get finished the next day. The rope vines have cured overnight and they’re pretty dry. They actually looked pretty good. If you get a closer look, you’ll notice that you can still see some of the rope in between the fibers.
Not exactly sure why this happens. In my experience, it happens almost every time. I think it’s because either I’m not using enough silicone to begin with or the silicone is actually soaking into the rope and pulling away from that peat moss a little bit, but that’s okay because I’m going to give these things an extra coating anyway. What I want to do is these are nice, but they’re kind of thin.
I’m going to take three of them like this and I’m going to very loosely intertwine them together. Try not to make it look too even or anything. I’m actually going to take these twist ties. Now, these are brown, which means you can probably hide them later. More unlikely, I’ll cut them off. Once this is all completely cured, then I will probably take the twist ties out. I’ll go ahead and clip the twist ties.
I’m going to be a little more careful about how I apply silicone. I’m going to look for the places where they come together, but also for the places where a lot of rope is showing. I’m going to put more silicone in those places that there’s a bad rope that’s almost completely not covered with peat. Just like yesterday, I’m not going to work that silicone into the rope. Now, that silicone is going to start to bind these three vines together.
Just try to make sure you get silicone all the way around. You want everything to be wet with silicone. It’s a fun job, but it’s a messy job. Back it goes into the peat mix. First, I’m getting schmutz and silicone on the bottom of my bin. The sacrifices I make for you guys to watch this happening. Now, what I’m going to do, I’m just going to let it sit in this for an hour.
Here’s one of the vines now that has had the silicone and the second coating of peat moss on it for about an hour. I’m going to let it sit here overnight as normal and see how it looks. I made three vines. After finishing them, I put all three back into the peat and sphagnum moss overnight. Here they are the next day. These are cured, ready to go. They’ll just be set aside until I’m ready to put them in the vivarium.
The way I put these into the enclosure is these are hard to find. These are anodized aluminum finishing screws, black. What I don’t like about a lot of hardscape, especially in terrestrial enclosures where there’s no water to boil them up and especially if they’re going to be hanging like tree limbs, is over time, gravity has a pretty negative effect on them. I like to secure them pretty tightly.
One reason I like the universal rocks background is that I can screw things into it pretty easily. What you do is you drill a pilot hole through the piece of wood, start the screw into it, then you just attach it to wherever you want it to go. I’ll probably put in maybe four or five pieces. I probably won’t use all of this that’s there. I’ll also show you how I attach the vines once I start putting them in.
I have this really nice piece of manzanita that does not really look like manzanita. It has taken me a while to figure out exactly how I wanted to fit this into the scape. I was so indecisive that I made a mock-up of the space on the wall in my basement, set the universal rock’s trunk in place and tested all the different ways the wood could fit until I find one that I kind of liked.
The smaller pieces of wood are going to be branches attached directly to the trunk using those anodized aluminum finishing screws. I am not sure how much weight these branches are going to have to hold and I trust the hardware more than I will trust glue. There really wasn’t a convenient place to attach that big piece to the trunk, so I’ll use these smaller branches to lock it in place.
The vines go in last. Mostly, they’re just held in place by draping them around and behind branches. In places where I can’t do that, they can also be held in place by those aluminum crews. One of the things I try to remember is that in nature, vines are typically going to be thicker near the ground and divided into branches higher up. I like to think of vines as a scaping tool to visually tie different parts of a scape together to help direct the path of the viewer’s eye which will naturally follow the lines.
Artistically, I think that this scape has got a problem in the upper-right corner. Everything flows in that direction into the back corner of the enclosure, but a path can also work in the opposite direction. Once an eye gets to that apex, there are other paths that can be followed back down into the scape. All of this is much easier to see now than it will be when the vivarium is full of plants.
Even when it is filled out, the hardscape is what will give the whole package structure. Plants will soften the visual paths, but they will not totally obscure them. That’s it. That’s as far as I’m going to get today. A few things I need to improve. I need to get a little more ABG and you can get a little more sphagnum moss in it. I like the way the wood is set up. I’ve got the vines.
I see a spot for maybe one more vine in there, but I think I’ll get plants in here first and then see if there’s any more hardscape that I want to do. This project is starting to come together. The next step? Plants. Thank you for watching Ted’s Fishroom. If you like this type of programming, please hit that subscribe, please hit that bell, and don’t miss any updates. See you next time.
