# Walnut paludarium



## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Started work on a new project recently: a column plywood paludarium. 

Dimensions are around 25"L X 17"W X 40"T. It's going to be located in a prominent corner where it will be visible from out living/dining room and kitchen, so I'm really hoping that I can have it look like a piece of nice furniture when it's done.

One of the other motivations for this build was that I discovered that they had started selling walnut at my local home depot. It's beautiful wood and I really wanted to build something with it.










Here's a side view of the tank and you can see the pocket holes used to attach the walnut face frame leaving an unblemished front face:










Here's the other side. The cutoff indicates roughly where the water height will be. The part above that will have a hinged door opening for easy access the planting area above.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

For the top piece of the door, I rip cut the walnut to get a seamless/grain matched opening. I drilled some holes and embedded 3 rare-earth magnets along the edge to help keep the door secure when closed:










Here's the door hinge installed. I used "lift-off" hinges, which will allow me to remove the door completely if needed for maintenance, and should also make it easier to eventually install the glass.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

I cut some vents into the top braces:


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

And here's the whole assembly:










You can see how the door will open:


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## wimvanvelzen (Nov 1, 2008)

Nice work! Not all images show up though.


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## TheForSaken (Nov 21, 2016)

Very nice craftsmanship!
I'm finishing up my stand this weekend, although I wanted walnut my local HD only had red oak. Will be staining it a walnut colour.
My god you put a lot of work into those hand sawed vents!
Not all photos are showing up on my end also.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Not sure what's going with the links for those two pictures - can't seem to fix them. Oh well, there'll be similar views to come, hopefully those pictures will work.

I sealed the tank the same way I've done my larger aquarium builds. Probably overkill, but better to be safe than sorry. Epoxied with West System Epoxy:










Taped the seams first:



















I used the trick of tipping the tank on it's edge, which helps all the epoxy to pool into the seam. 

After the seams were done, I also fiberglassed the bottom and sides up to the waterline.










Total of 3-4 coats of epoxy.


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## RyanD (Jul 18, 2006)

Is there a particular reason you choose west system epoxy/how much research have you done? I've been doing some research and am having a hard time deciding between liquid rubber products, pond shield epoxy, mac acr, west system, or us composites. I considered drylok, but it doesn't sound like that's a great waterproofer, but there was mixed opionions on that. 

Looks great! Can't wait to see the rest!


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## Bighurt (Jun 18, 2011)

RyanD said:


> Is there a particular reason you choose west system epoxy


Cause its the cats meow.

That being said it's a fine line between the three; Max ACR, West systems, and US composites...they all are pretty equal in my opinion depending on the application. In fact US composites acually sells west systems if I recall correctly.

I wouldn't have used fiber on the flat panels just the corners when doing the fillets but it doesn't hurt anything.

The problem I have with liquid rubber products is the color, its just plain ugly. The resin can be tinted, I prefer a gloss black to simulate the shadow box museum look.

The problem with Drylok is it's application. In this application the OP is using a wood product. Wood will flex slightly over it's life, this flex in some cases may cause the Drylok to fail where it is needed most...in the corners.

The application demonstrated with reinforced fiber/resin fillets in the corners and a field of resin will resist any flex in this application. The OP will most likely not see any failures. However for a superior joint, one would replace the typical glue with resin before joining the panels. The OP doesn't specify his method I'm only speculating the use with wood glue on a pocket joint


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

RyanD said:


> Is there a particular reason you choose west system epoxy/how much research have you done? I've been doing some research and am having a hard time deciding between liquid rubber products, pond shield epoxy, mac acr, west system, or us composites. I considered drylok, but it doesn't sound like that's a great waterproofer, but there was mixed opionions on that.
> 
> Looks great! Can't wait to see the rest!


Bighurt covered most of the major points. West Systems is a very nice product and convenient since it's available locally at West Marine stores, so I don't need to deal with shipping. It's one of the more expensive options in terms of cost per volume, however it's also available in smaller bottle sizes, so since I knew I wouldn't need very much for this build that worked out. If I was building a larger tank and needed more coverage I'd go with US Composites or Max ACR, which are both 100% solids and pretty similar.

Pond shield also works, but it's much thicker in consistency and not as easy to work with IMO, especially if you're planning to use it to wet out fiberglass.

Absolutely don't use Drylok for long term waterproofing. I've made this mistake in the past and had builds fail.

Here's a post a wrote up on another forum several years ago with more details on methods of waterproofing plywood tanks:

https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/how-to-waterproof-a-plywood-aquarium.356641/


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Finished the stand. I tried to design it to be fairly sleek and mid century modern in style. I neglected to take many pictures of the stand construction, except for this one of the door handle that I cut and shaped out of some scrap walnut.










Tank on the stand:


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## RyanD (Jul 18, 2006)

That's some really great work! 

Sent from my FRD-L04 using Tapatalk


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Made some progress on the background.

Rough structure cut out of 2" XPS foam. Siliconed and supported with some bamboo skewers. There's space in the back corner for a Grimm-style air circulation channel, and the notches and protrusions are intended to support some cool pieces of driftwood.










Carve carve carve...










General shaping done. I'm planning to have a waterfall flowing out of that hole in the upper left.










Painted with tinted Drylok. 1-2 main coats, followed by several light shading and drybrush coats to add depth and highlight texture. In one of my previous builds a couple of my fish ended up injuring hemselves after swimming into the walls and scratching themselves on the rough drylok, so this time I sanded it down a bit to smooth it out a little. I left the upper part rougher to make it easier for plants to attach.



















Dry fit










Will plan to do the final installation after the glass is in, and will add some black pond foam to fill the gaps and round out the structure. I think I'm going to leave the underwater area as it is, but I'd like to add some organic material topcoat to the upper portion to encourage plant and moss growth. Maybe epoxy with some peat moss or ABG mix sprinkled on top.


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## Raiden (Aug 2, 2012)

This is cool; I didn't know it was possible to waterproof wood securely enough to use it to build vivaria.

Bookmarked for future use...


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## hp192 (Feb 28, 2016)

Beautiful craftsmanship.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Here's the dry fit with the driftwood in place:










Inspection:


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## TheForSaken (Nov 21, 2016)

Your build looks fantastic, very well done.
My only concern is your use of the XPS foam and the real possibility of the negative long term effects to the habitats of this beautiful paludarium. 
Extruded Polystyrene Foam (XPS) polystyrene is created from Styrene, and is well known to leach and cause all sorts of problems, enough so that I will never use it in any of my vivs.


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## ruairidh_ (Feb 9, 2016)

TheForSaken said:


> Your build looks fantastic, very well done.
> My only concern is your use of the XPS foam and the real possibility of the negative long term effects to the habitats of this beautiful paludarium.
> Extruded Polystyrene Foam (XPS) polystyrene is created from Styrene, and is well known to leach and cause all sorts of problems, enough so that I will never use it in any of my vivs.


Surely the drylok would prevent it from leaching?


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## TheForSaken (Nov 21, 2016)

ruairidh_ said:


> Surely the drylok would prevent it from leaching?


I imagine sealing the entire foam sheet front and back with drylok would help to a certain extent. But half of the foam will be under constant water and the OP mentioned to not rely on drylok for waterproofing 
"Absolutely don't use Drylok for long term waterproofing. I've made this mistake in the past and had builds fail". 
This and also I pin most plants and by doing so I break the seal.
XPS, is easy to work with, light weight, relatively inexpensive but the degassing of awful chemicals known to be counter productive to my goals. I chose not to work with it, maybe accceptable to some just not for me.
Sorry for the derailment OP. Your work is truely a peice of art.


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## ruairidh_ (Feb 9, 2016)

I agree It is a work of art and Im pretty sure I've seen the aquarium behind it on planted tank. The_deeb have you ever seen furniture by George nakashima? Some of it is similar to what you have done.


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## Bighurt (Jun 18, 2011)

TheForSaken said:


> Your build looks fantastic, very well done.
> My only concern is your use of the XPS foam and the real possibility of the negative long term effects to the habitats of this beautiful paludarium.
> Extruded Polystyrene Foam (XPS) polystyrene is created from Styrene, and is well known to leach and cause all sorts of problems, enough so that I will never use it in any of my vivs.


Extruded polystyrene is considered an inert product and is safe to use in a variety of conditions to include direct burial.

I'd be interested to see a fact sheet.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

TheForSaken said:


> Sorry for the derailment OP. .


Not a derailment at all; I think the discussion of sytrofoam toxicity is very relevant. 

I would agree that I wouldn't want to rely on the drylok to completely seal off the foam from the water, since there will inevitably be pinholes in the coating. That being said, the drylok does provide a pretty good barrier to minimize water exposure, and more importantly provides almost 100% protection from any UV exposure, which could promote foam breakdown.

However, even if there was no Drylok, I personally think the safety concerns regarding XPS foam are a little overblown. I know that styrene has been reported to have have endocrine disrupting abilities, but this is not entirely clear, as shown in this recent review article: 
"A critical review finds styrene lacks direct endocrine disruptor activity." Crit Rev Toxicol. 2015;45(9):727-64

It's also important to note that styrene and polystyrene are not the same thing. While there could be legitimate safetly concerns for the workers who produce polystyrene and have to deal with the raw styrene components, but after it's polymerized, XPS is pretty inert. I guess there's a possibility of a small amount of unpolymerized styrene being left in the product, which could outgass, but I would imagine most of this would happen immediately after production. By the time it's been shipped, sat at the store, sat in my basement and then been abused by my carving tools, I would guess most of the most volatile compounds would have dissipated. 

In addition, degradation of XPS usually results in microparticles of polymerized styrene, which has very low receptor binding affinity. Degradation of XPS into styrene requires very high temperatures (100oC+), in which case your viv inhabitants probably have more serious issues  

Also, the study that I've seen cited in regards to this issue ("Effects of Styrene Monomer and Trimer on Gonadal Sex Differentiation of Genetic Males of the Frog Rana rugosa" by Ohtani et al.) doesn't really make a very strong case IMO. They used extremely high concentrations of sytrene, and even then 97% of the treated tadpoles showed no effects. They claim to have found some signs of abnormal gonadal development in 8/250 frogs, but there is no dose dependency, which is suspicious, and they specifically note that they found no significant differences between the sytrene treatments and the vehicle control. This is an important point; the vehicle control in this case was ethanol (i.e., they dissolved the styrene in ethanol and then mixed that with the water) so it's quite possible the ethanol was contributing an effect. Yet despite the absence of any significant results they end up concluding that styrenes have a weak estrogen-like effect.


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## TheForSaken (Nov 21, 2016)

Wow, thank you for clearing this up the_deeb


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## oldlady25715 (Nov 17, 2007)

Looks great. I'd maybe have done walnut panels over the cabinet on the bottom, but that's stretching for constructive criticism and I see that it matches your other works in background anyway. 

Wondering how the heavy wood was mounted to stay on on the foam? Goodstuff pond sealant? 

Can't wait to see finished product!


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## AOA (Jan 19, 2017)

great discourse on XPS and an amazing build. You are going to enjoy this one for quite some time I'm sure.

Cheers

JD


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## TheForSaken (Nov 21, 2016)

I'd love to see updated pics if you had a chance to add plants


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Still a little ways from plants, but making slow and steady progress.

1-1/4" Forstner bit to drill holes for 1/2" bulkheads










Holes drilled










Glass is in - now it's a a tank!



















Added mesh for the top vents










Background installation










Turned out that this was a little trickier than I expected. Couldn't orient the big piece in with the glass in place so I had to cut it into two.



















Fan box in the corner


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## rjs5134 (Feb 1, 2017)

Amazing work!!! I LOVE this build.


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## AOA (Jan 19, 2017)

rjs5134 said:


> Amazing work!!! I LOVE this build.


ditto! a work of art for sure. your craftsmanship is superb

awesome skill set


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## Nath514 (Jul 8, 2012)

Looking great so far! Can't wait to see how it all comes together.


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## dentex (Apr 22, 2016)

What a great work! I really enjoyed the process since now. 
Following the thread from now on.


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## Gezt (Feb 15, 2009)

I was looking into XPS, drylok and plywood sealing for a new build this summer and this thread has cleared up so much. Amazing build OP.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Foamed the driftwood in with pond foam. First time using this stuff and like it so much more than greatstuff. After carving, it already looks a lot like pumice, so I'm not too worried about carefully covering every inch of it. I gave it a light drybrushing of drylok and it already matches the rest of the background pretty well.



















I just gave the foam and parts of the background a light brushing of epoxy and rubbed on some ABG mix and ground sphagnum moss to add a little bit of organic material to hopefully facilitate plant growth. Still waiting for it to dry, but already looks quite nice.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Starting to think about lighting. Do you think a 24" Exoexotic E series light would provide sufficient light for this tank? I don't plan to do much planting in the water, or at least will likely be sticking with low light plants, so mostly want to make sure the upper half is well lit.


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## Bighurt (Jun 18, 2011)

40" is a lot of vertical height, since you aren't concerned with the water you will have an easier time finding sufficient light.

I can't find anything from the manufacture but if you can get close to 100 PAR out of that fixture you will be fine...may even get some illumination in the water portion.


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## wimvanvelzen (Nov 1, 2008)

That is coming out great! 
I wish I could work so clean and precise...


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Thanks Wim!

What do folks think about 2 of the JungleDawn 22W bulbs? I'd have liked to use the 40W mega pendants, but a) they're currently out of stock, and b), I'm not sure if I want to punch that much light down into the water.

Alternatively, for a similar price I'm thinking about 2X Finnex 24/7; one run on max with a timer and the other running on 24/7 mode for the sunrise/sunset effects.

Any thoughts?


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Here are some details of the plumbing. The return is split between the water section and the waterfall. The gate valve let's me precisely control the flow to the waterfall.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Here it is filled and with the first few plants added (mostly emersed aquatics at this stage - xmas moss, anubias nana petite, HC cuba, Eliocharis acicularis mini. Micranthemum monte carlo. Figured I'd just throw a bunch of things in there and see what sticks. 

For lighting I ended up going with an Ecotech Radion Pro that I managed to pick up for a bargain at a fish convention last weekend.


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## ruairidh_ (Feb 9, 2016)

Looking amazing, is it at all possible to get a couple of pictures of the plumbing in place?


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## FlyFishRI (Jan 15, 2017)

Very cool build, can't wait to see the progress!


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

ruairidh_ said:


> Looking amazing, is it at all possible to get a couple of pictures of the plumbing in place?


Sure, though honestly it's not much to see. The plumbing inside the tank is designed to be virtually invisible, but here's the filter and manifold in the cabinet:


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Moss and plant growth around the waterfall and broader wicking area has been pretty great so far:


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Some updates





































Leaf litter!


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## R_jay (Jul 17, 2017)

I like seeing some reef lighting being used. Interested to see how it affects growth. If all goes well for you I may use similar lighting for my build. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Video update:


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## SLR (Jan 6, 2016)

Very Nice!


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## wimvanvelzen (Nov 1, 2008)

Wow, that is nice. What size will the razorfish reach?


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

wimvanvelzen said:


> Wow, that is nice. What size will the razorfish reach?


Thanks, Wim. It's Apteronotus leptorhynchus, and I expect it should reach around 15-20cm. If it outgrows this tank I plan to move it to my 150g.


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Some updates:

Epidendrum porpax has put out some blooms:










With the shifting path of the sun, the tank has started getting direct sunlight in the morning, which I think looks very nice. Surprisingly, algae han't been much of a problem, and all the underwater moss has been growing like crazy.


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## *tinc_so (Dec 18, 2016)

man, gotta love what natural light does to a vivarium! looks great


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## jarteta97 (Jun 13, 2014)

The moss growth has been absolutely amazing, I love it, the tank has turned out really nice


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## Damon Ryan (Nov 13, 2015)

Looks great! What species of moss is that? 


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## kromar (Jun 6, 2015)

looks amazing! and im sure those fish also appreciate the sunlight


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Some updated pics. Things are getting pretty overgrown but I like it.


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## FatManJack (Sep 22, 2018)

Wow! The tillandsia on top combined with the peperomia and oak leaf creeping fig cascading down make for an interesting visual. Are those spikes poking up throughout the tank from the peperomia?


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## S2G (Jul 5, 2016)

Amazing craftsmanship. Well done


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## the_deeb (Apr 21, 2008)

Thanks, and yes, the little spikes are from the peperomia.

Also forgot to post this crazy tilladnsia bloom that appeared earlier this year


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## DTB (Apr 29, 2018)

Beautiful craftsmanship! I wish all of us could complete a build with that much attention to detail. I tip my hat sir!


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## dentex (Apr 22, 2016)

I've been subscribed to this thread looking for an update, sooner or later. It arrived and it was worth it. Great work! I love your build.


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