# My newest rack(s)



## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Hey guys,
In another thread I mentioned, that I am not very happy with my 3 exoterra (which I bought for the first - and last - time) and that I decided to cancel the remaining seven ones which I ordered and will do everything on my own.

So for those, who are interested, here is a pic heavy build thread which shows how I build my vivs.
I won't keep it short. 
If someone is really interested, it doesn't help to keep it short.
If not, well... than at least writing it down will help me to maintain my own motivation with building these vivs. I will have to do a few more during this year.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 1 - basics*

I use a material called *forex* or *trovicell*. It is made from expanded pvc. _Yes_, it's safe to use, _no_ I don't have any sources. This material is usually used as printing surface for advertising sign-plates. The panel's surface is closed-cell, so of course it is *watertight*.
It has *good thermal insulation properties* (much better than glass), looks nice and clean, is very *lightweight* and even if you do not order pre-cut pieces it is *easy to cut *with an usual box cutter. (it is best to use a CNC milling machine, next choice will be a bandsaw... but you indeed can use a box cutter if you have a good eye)

I do *not*show you step by step how I assembled the larger panels of the example viv. I think all of you know how to put a cube together.

*Two final points:*

1. You cannot use silicone.
You need a polymer based adhesive to glue the forex pieces together. I use an adhesive called "Soudal FixAll Classic white" but I am not sure if this is a common brand in the US. I highly recommend using a polymer based adhesive. Do not use a primer for silicone.

2. You can use tiny wood screws to put everything together before you use the glue. This ensures stability, so I myself prefer this method over just using the glue.

Here you can see the "base" viv, put together with screws.

This certain viv's dimensions are 18 x 24 x 24 inch.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 2 - front ventilation*

I use two ventilation stripes: one beneath the front doors and one above. I do this to have the ability to completely cover the top ventilation (during a heavy rain season) and still will have enough air flow to keep the front free of condensation.
By the way I will mist by hand. I have a high-end automated misting system with several dozen of nozzles, but I don't use it since several years. I don't like it.

I mark the position of the ventilation holes with a tool, which I found in my mother's kitchen some years ago. I think it is a leather pick or something like that. It's nice to have, because it helps to mark the positions on both sandwiched forex boards in a single step and I also use it to predrill the holes for the small screws from step 1.

I use a usual wood drill to drill the holes. It will look terrible after this first step. That's okay.
Next I use a hole cutter. It looks way better after this second step.
I finish this by using a round knife sharpener. This will make the holes looking really nice.
I by the way use this knife sharpener to deflash the sharp edges of the forex pieces in all cases where I know the frogs could jump against them. I do this to minimize the risk of snout injuries. For the same reason the holes on the frog side are made the same way than the holes on the human side.

Everything else can be seen from the pics itself.
Supplementary note: I used tiny screws to keep the V2A mesh in place. Then I remembered the last time I did this, the V2A mesh (stainless steel) and the screws (stainless steel) started to corrode anyway (due to different alloying).
So I removed the screws and insteadly used the polymer adhesive.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 3 - front window profiles*
Nothing to mention here...


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 4 - styrofoam landscaping*
I want to give the frogs much horizontal extra space to climb on. On the other hand I don't want to lose too much light on the ground. So I decided to cut a large hole into the mid installation. I cut my styrofoam with an electric knife.


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## Harts (May 6, 2014)

Interesting. what did you use to stick the foam pieces to the pvc walls?


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 5 - sealing / coating*
I use *two part adhesive* (PU-based) which is *used for parquet floor*. You have to pay attention to the *highly exact mixing ratio* of both components but done right it is *safe to use*. _No_, I don't have any "sources" for this... these days everybody always wants some references... I have years of experience using this technique and I myself learned this from people who sell tanks with this type of coating to frog keepers since almost _decades_. So I myself, completely unattributed, have to be your source 

*I don't use a brush.*
I use my hands. I wear single-use household gloves. Last time when I did this I had to open the door to receive a parcel, still wearing one chocolate brown covered glove on my left hand with a few hairy looking pieces of peat sticking on the PU mass and the postman appeared to be... a bit nauseated by me. But hey, it's all for the frogs.  

I cover the PU with a *mixture of hill moor peat and fine milled sphagnum*. Both have to be bone dry. I didn't use sphagnum before, but I thought it could be good to add some to keep the mixture moist for a longer time if sprayed.

I dried the peat / sphagnum mixture in my oven because I don't want nematodes and fungus gnat from the peat to hatch in my vivs and I don't want the sphagnum to revive. I later added some other moss and fern spores to the mixture.
Then I throw it against the fresh PU until everything is covered and press it with my hands against the PU. *It is good to wear a mask* or something else to cover your mouth and nose while doing this because their will be lot of dust. Pity that I didn't wear a mask while the postman was at the door...
It has to cure (technically it doesn't cure, but don't let us be to picky...) for at least 24 hours, better would be 48.
The clean borders are made with masking tape which I removed after I covered everything with the peat mixture.
The bottommost area is free of PU sealing and peat because I want to have the ability to easily fix leaks after years.
*FYI: up to now I don't have had any leaks and I use this kind of forex vivs since several years.*


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Harts said:


> Interesting. what did you use to stick the foam pieces to the pvc walls?


The same polymer based adhesive.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 6 - top ventilation*
I use very approximate 1/3 of the top as ventilation area. I do this for several reasons:

1. there is simply no need to do anything smaller. If I want less ventilation I can cover the top ventilation with a sheet of glass.
If I want more ventilation and don't have a large top ventilation, then... bad construction.

2. I want to have the ability to use hot flood lights, which I can put directly on the V2A mesh, so it has to be at least a few centimetres larger than such flood lights.
Don't put something very hot on forex panels. They are hardly inflammable but *if* they burn they will evaporate *hydrochlorid acid*.
However I don't want to use flood lights for now. I will use T5 HE fluorescent tubes.

3. some frogs need fast changing humidity conditions. It isn't easy to satisfy their needs with vivs which suffer from poor ventilation.

I wanted to use aluminium-L-profiles for the mesh endings to the left and right - but I didn't find any at my home depot, so I decided to cut small pieces of forex instead. I think it looks very clean. I like it.
Everything else can be seen from the pics.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 7 - top and front glass*
Nothing special here.
Top glass isn't glued to the forex to keep everything accessible for me. I never glue the top glass panels to my vivs. I often have to relocate and it is very easy to catch the frogs and give the lightweight forex vivs without breakable front and top glass panels to the movers company.
I used the small pieces of forex from step 6 to keep the top glass in place.


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## Y0urbestfriend (Jan 31, 2014)

Wow, the hardscape looks amazing. The very detailed discription on everything you do is also great.
Subbed


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

*Step 8 - substrate and drainage layer*
I already introduced the basic idea here: http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/2158641-post26.html
I will use ABG mix on top of the blue drainage layer, covered with leaf litter.

Excess water can be siphoned through the slot.

If it won't work as expected (I am pretty sure it will) I can easily drill a drainage hole in the bottom of the vivs and use some rubber hoses and / or U-profiles to gather the water in a large container on the floor.
I just don't *want* to do this if it isn't neccessary because these tanks (at least 6 of them for now, 12 in the future) will be placed in my living room. My living room is the major territory of my maine **** tomcat (I am just tolerated ... sometimes) who is highly attracted by any kind of drippy water...
Water containing a lot of frog poo and dead insects and my tomcat isn't a good mixture.

Edit: Now, a few weeks later, I can tell you that it works really fine! Leaf litter on top always dry while ~75% humidity, everything okay


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

And voila... first rack finnished


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Anyhow... added a shot of the three initial Exo Terra's as well


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## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

Looks great and light weight. Why didn't you like the exo's? Too many necessary mods and the weight?


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

The depth... All my tanks are at least 50 cm (20 inch) deep, most are 60 cm (24 inch) deep.
I didn't find any Exo Terra's in Germany with more than 18 inch depth.

Yeah, the modifications as well... nothing is fruit fly proof, the top isn't well designed for a frog rack (the official tops with integrated lighting I'm talking about).

And the pricing... I think they are MUCH too expensive for such a poorly made piece of glass and plastic...


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## a hill (Aug 4, 2007)

Cutterfly said:


> And the pricing... I think they are MUCH too expensive for such a poorly made piece of glass and plastic...



THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
They are cheaply made and of low quality material. Same with zoomed. I just had a top warp from normal use and waked by the tank to see my two phelsuma klemmerii basking up the morning sunshine. ON TOP of their tank.... Granted they just hopped on my hand and went back into their other tank when I came over. 

I'm loving the design and attention to detail. What is the price of the material and supplies? I have some familiarity with the material from years past (a neighbor made signs) but never thought of using it. I just had acrylic cubes made and plan to have a rack made as well. 

Great work, I'm doing foam under substrate too. 

Subscribed,



-Andrew

All words above were written by some crazy guy who is too young to live life simply. Any and all information is my recollection and opinion, unless cited. 

Transcribed via Siri.


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## jimmy rustles (Mar 10, 2013)

Ive seen some Forex and tangit builds and it gets me more and more interested.
Are there other colors available or is it possible to paint it?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

a hill said:


> What is the price of the material and supplies?


I am located in Germany, so I cannot tell you for the US. Here in Germany I get it precut online for 28 EUR / m² in 10 mm. I once got it for 7 EUR / m² from a local advertising guy. Has been very cool for me. I did a lot of stuff with this, even my tablet stand is made of forex lol.

There exists another almost similar material which is scratch resistent and has a very hard surface. In Germany it is called Kömacell. If I do my next tanks I will order this instead of the softer material which I currently used.



jimmy rustles said:


> Ive seen some Forex and tangit builds and it gets me more and more interested.
> Are there other colors available or is it possible to paint it?


The cheap stuff is always plain white, but there exist multiple colors, you can get it in green, red, black, blue, yellow, grey and white.


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## a hill (Aug 4, 2007)

Makes sense. I wasn't expecting local prices to me . 

I might play with it in the future. How is it as far as mess goes, crazy shavings everywhere, or pretty manageable?


-Andrew

All words above were written by some crazy guy who is too young to live life simply. Any and all information is my recollection and opinion, unless cited. 

Transcribed via Siri.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

While drilling the holes (not for the screws, just for my type of front ventilation) there is a lot of mess. If you simply cut it with a box cutter there are no shavings at all and if you don't get precut stuff and cut it with a bandsaw you will have a little dust which can easily be removed with a damp cloth.


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## jimmy rustles (Mar 10, 2013)

Cutterfly said:


> The cheap stuff is always plain white, but there exist multiple colors, you can get it in green, red, black, blue, yellow, grey and white.


Thanks.
I guess you use the 10mm thick ones?


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

jimmy rustles said:


> Thanks.
> I guess you use the 10mm thick ones?


For my newest vivs I used 10mm panels for all major parts. My largest viv from this thread is made of 5mm panels, but it bends easily while moved.
If I would construct it again, I would use 10mm thick material this time. (provides better thermal insulation as well)

Smaller vivs (i.e. 12 x 12 x 18) can be made of 5mm panels without any problem, I think.


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## Athena (Mar 20, 2013)

Thanks for posting this!

While our display tanks benefit from being all glass, it's a great reminder that it's not necessarily the best approach when building a rack setup. I imagine that in the event of the most horrible of horribles - a rack crash - these would fare better than most and be significantly less likely in the first place. 

Wonderful execution and design.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

I recently made some artificial vines out of black silicon, peat, aluminum wire and nylon shoe laces.
I think they turned out okay (has been my first attempt making those).

Furthermore I made some coconut water bowls (one for each viv). The frogs seem to like these.
Does someone know, how long coconut bowls will hold water? Until it evaporates or does it diffuse slowly?

And I want to order some ferns. I don't want the ferns to be on the ground. I want to mount them on the horizontal styrofoam "branches", maybe with some spaghgnum wrapped around their rhizomes. Will _Polypodium formosanum_ and _Nephrolepis cordifolia_ work for me? 
I don't know much about plants. The only thing I know is that the fern which I used in my largest viv (current picture attached) will get too large for the new vivs. I had to remove alot and it still is very large...

Edit: I see, there are many different cordifolia. The one which I ask for is called "duffy".


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Yep, they really like the coconuts.  I hope this one to be a female, because the other one in this viv is calling every morning. 

I'm sorry for the picture quality. I just have my samsung tablet to take the photos. May be some day I will buy a "real" camera...


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## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

Nice red on those Silverstonei...are you supplementing anything special?


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## Mohlerbear (Feb 20, 2014)

Cutterfly, how do you remove the fruit from inside the coconut shell?


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## TapDart91 (Jul 7, 2014)

Wowww...just woowww thats spectacular


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Mohlerbear said:


> Cutterfly, how do you remove the fruit from inside the coconut shell?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I used the blunt edge of a heavy knife to tap around the nut around it's equator until it cracked open. Because I wanted to use both halfs I tried to force a direction (because I did not want the usual half with the 3 small holes) but this didn't work that well. Well, at least that's why there is all the craggedness, so they look really natural. Of course I deflashed it.

I then used a sharp spoon to remove the fruit step by step. Well... removing means I ate a lot of it 
Then I put the shells in boiling water for 30 min.

By the way, some of them hold the water better than others, but none of them seem to hold it for days.  I will try a saw next time, may be there are microfissures resulting from tapping it open.


dmartin72 said:


> Nice red on those Silverstonei...are you supplementing anything special?


Just Repashy's stuff... I think I wrote about it several times in a thread about my largest viv, so I am not willing to go into detail right now 
By the way some are deep red and some are more of a neon orange, may be somedays I can take a photo of a deep red and a neon orange frog sitting next to each other, so ppl can compare.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Not two sitting next to each other yet, but this is one of the lesser red frogs.


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## austin (Dec 6, 2013)

Has anyone ever used the corrugated plastic sheet? How well does that work? I can find that in 10mm thickness. The forex posted above looks solid not corrugated.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

austin said:


> Has anyone ever used the corrugated plastic sheet? How well does that work? I can find that in 10mm thickness. The forex posted above looks solid not corrugated.


Hey Austin, you are right. Mine are not corrugated. I don't know corrugated plastic sheets, so I cannot tell you if it will work for you.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Update

The moss mix which I added turns out okay on the wood pieces of the top vivs as well as on the peat walls of the vivs below.

It does *not* grow well in my Exo Terra vivs for some reason. I really don't know why, because I did the same kind of sealing and coating for all the vivs.
The last attached image shows the moss in the Exo Terra vivs.

I also added two ferns.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

Larger update - I have to split this into several posts, due to many attachments.

I added *active ventilation* to all new vivs. I also added them to the 3 exo terra's. They run for 2 hours from 7-9 pm. I first had them setup for 15 minutes once an hour. Has been to much, imho. Now the plants dry well over night, but humidity is in the 70's-80's for the whole day, so I mist once or twice a week.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

2.) I visited a friend and got three new additions: For two of the three exo terra's shown in this thread I got 1.2 *Epipedobates tricolor Highland* and 1.2 *Epipedobates anthonyi Pacha* (I'm not sure if I spelled it right...)
I am sorry for the bad picture quality. The frogs are shy and I just took a few pics before I moved them to their new homes.

I picked up some cool *orange galactonotus* from my friend as well.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

3.) I took a few pics of nice frogs from my friends addition... 

First froglet is a leucomelas with uhm... funny... texture.
Next two are auratus, next is a tinctorius limegreen, then an azureus which I think is very nice, next two should have been 2 pics of tinctorius nominat/Boulanger which he selected for their nice texture but I accidentally uploaded another tinctorious froglet between these two.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

4.) I've done another viv similar to the other ones a few months earlier. It houses one of my larger groups of Excidobates mysteriosus. It is made almost the same way, so I thought I could show it as well.
The moss is Riccia fluitans from my tadpole pools. Btw I don't use broms for my mysteriosus (and never did). Some may find this odd, but it works very well for me since a long time.


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

5.) I took a few new pics of the frogs in their new vivs.
Orange bicolor:


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

as well as terribilis:


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

silverstonei:


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## Cutterfly (Apr 9, 2009)

... and two of my azureus pairs (which are now housed in two of the glass tanks of the top row instead of one auratus pair and a few of the selected "vittatus" which do better in the original group of 10).


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