# New Vivarium



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

Greetings,

I'm new to DB (but not new to vivaria) and just finished a new 3'x3'x7' setup.

Here's a full-length and a detailed view (the images are hi-res - open them in a new tab to see all the detail): 



















The viv is primarily for orchids - but bromeliads were included specifically for dart frog breeding habitat - so I'll be adding a suitable arboreal-preferring species eventually.

I built this from the plywood up so if anyone is interested I can post images and a description of that process. The basic ingredients were: Plywood, epoxy, styrofoam, Ecoweb and Hyrgolon - and a set of curved glass shower doors.


----------



## Y0urbestfriend (Jan 31, 2014)

Wow, this looks sick, Am i correct in saying that you made a vivarium in a shower??? pretty cool idea xD. i'd love to see more pictures with better lighting or something, it looks a bit weird. not sure if thats possible though, keep us updated


----------



## Andrew Lee (Jan 21, 2014)

kimcmich said:


> Greetings,
> 
> I'm new to DB (but not new to vivaria)


We can certainly tell! Anyway, amazing vivarium and I sent a pm.


----------



## maudefrog (Dec 5, 2010)

Phenomenal! Love the racinaea! Subscribed!


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

Y0urbestfriend said:


> Wow, this looks sick, Am i correct in saying that you made a vivarium in a shower???


Not quite - but close. Using a shower stall might have been simpler (and cheaper) - but my problem was fitting anything pre-frabricated through the narrow doors of my old Victorian house. I had to build this in-place so I used glass shower doors but the rest is waterproofed (w/ epoxy) plywood.

I'll post images of the construction process this evening.


----------



## readygrown (Apr 5, 2008)

That thing is packed with plants! Nice. Plant list?

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

OK - I removed the badly lit hi-res images above and have some better images to share. 

So, one more time, the full viv and an inset. Lower-res attached, here are the links to the hi-res:

http://anexaminedlife.net/dendro/NCM_0063.JPG
http://anexaminedlife.net/dendro/NCM_0062.JPG


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

I did some playing with my camera and got a better exposure for detail images. The actual tank is not nearly as bright as it appears in-camera. Here are links to the hi-res images (lower-res attached below)


http://anexaminedlife.net/dendro/NCM_0058.JPG
http://anexaminedlife.net/dendro/NCM_0060.JPG


----------



## Y0urbestfriend (Jan 31, 2014)

This is honestly the most breathtaking vivarium i've seen. soooooooooo many orchids, its amazing, I'd love to see a picture of the hardscape if you have one since it seems like you put some serious effort in that too. I'd love to see more of the orchids as well, maybe photograph them when they're blooming and post them in bunches of 5-10 pictures or something, although it might not be worth the hassle for you, i'd certainly appreciate it


----------



## bjmac (Nov 27, 2015)

Amazing collection of orchids. What kind of back ground are they attached to and how are they watered.


----------



## DerpyDartFrog (Sep 17, 2015)

Great looking viv, kimcmich!

Sorry but I'm a DIY Dork!

What's the thickness of the acrylic used for this build? Is it a specific brand of lexan/polycarbonate?


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

*The Build*

As I mentioned before, this isn't my first viv. I've kept aquaria for 30+ years, select herps for nearly that long, and orchids for the latest 12 or so. A couple of years ago, I built a half-cylinder polycarbonate terrarium for my small box turtle. Sadly, an ill-considered repair of one of the seams in the terrarium resulted in my dear turtle suffocating from the fumes 

So what had been intended as a habitat for Mr. Turtle became the Mr. Turtle Memorial Orchid Terrarium. That tank, an open top terrarium with a small misting system, was so easy to maintain for such lush growth that I wanted a larger space... and one from which my partners' cats could be excluded (they too "appreciated" the lush growth of my open-top terrarium).

In planning the upgrade I wanted to go big but I also had to deal with an already furnished house without any long walls for a giant horizontal terrarium. I wanted another open-top for ventilation - only this one had to be cat proof. Those constraints allowed only a tall, vertically oriented terrarium.

The political realities of adding an appliance-sized vivarium to an already well 'riumed household meant I needed to give up something - and a 90 gallon corner tank in the dining room was the perfect sacrifice as well as opening a great location for the new viv. I also wanted a viv with at least 2 dimensions wider than the doorways of my house. This meant whatever I got would need to assembled in-place. 

So with the geometry and location settled, I next had to build it out of something. The corner placement meant 2 walls didn't need to be transparent. The back/side walls would also need to be strong enough to support decor and the hardware for the doors. I settled on water-proofed plywood for the back walls/bottom and then turned my attention to the front of the vivarium.

In a perfect world, the orchid terrarium would have no front walls at all - and I wanted to get as close to that as possible. Also, I really liked the curved front of the aquarium this vivarium replaced and the corner shape meant a curved front gave me more interior space as well. After finding that custom-curved acrylic and glass in the sizes I needed were prohibitively expensive (both to fabricate and to ship), I turned to what pre-fabbed items I might re-purpose for my doors.

In short order I discovered the curved-glass wonders of mass-market "frameless" shower enclosures. The problem, however, is that most of these doors are of the sliding type and thus I would have problems cleaning the non-sliding panel as well as detritus in the sliding track. A little more sleuthing uncovered a perfect set of tempered-glass, curved-front shower doors on hinges - at a clearance price with free shipping!

So I ordered the doors and headed to home depot for some wood. I came home with 3/4" walnut plywood, some metal fasteners and a ton of liquid nails. I first attached the back walls and then the floor (a double layer of plywood for added rigidity). Liquid nails was the main joiner - with metal braces in the interior corners for additional warping/torsion resistance.

I did alot of research to choose the right water-proofing method for my wood components. I settled on a potable-water-storage approved epoxy paint for covering all the plywood surfaces. I applied multiple coats and let it all dry over 2 weeks.

Whew - I didn't mean to write a book (though I suppose this is still only a chapter ) so I'll take the rest of this up tomorrow...


----------



## Vinegaroonie (Jul 31, 2015)

This is stunning! Awesome job planting, it looks very natural. I can't wait to see some frogs in there 

Thanks,

Niko


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

*The Build Pt 2*

With the epoxy paint dry, I added casters and righted the assembly. Next came the doors. With the doors added, the additional stress on the walls to support the doors was enough to bend the walls slightly and prevent the doors from aligning. So I added a 1"x4" clear acrylic crossbeam to the top of the terrarium to prevent the deformation.

With the crossbeam in place, the doors matched up nearly perfectly. However, I live in earthquake country - and large plate-glass doors shouldn't actually meet directly at all - so I added a clear polycarbonate edging to the doors which both protects the edges of the glass and is flexible enough to be shimmed into a perfect seal between the doors.

The bottom of the terrarium needed to be something of a basin to collect the water run-off. I drilled and epoxied a drain hole and then used a 3/8" thick sheet of polycarbonate to create a curved bulkhead matching the doors. With clamps I was able to match the bulkhead to within 1/8" of perfectly aligned with the doors. More epoxy sealed the polycarbonate wall in place and added another layer of waterproofing to the already well-sealed bottom. Here again, strategic placement of the polycarbonate edging gave a perfect seal with the bulkhead and glass doors (my obsession over perfect seals is quite unneeded for orchids... this extra work is in the interest of containing frog prey).

With the bottom and the rest of the interior fully sealed, I paused in the work to consider the proper interior assembly. The aforementioned orchid terrarium was built using real wood - I was lucky enough to find a gorgeous knarled and contorted madrone trunk on the roadside that I was able to cut and stack into a great base for orchids. The problem with the scale of my new tank was that using wood for my intended design would have added 500lbs to the weight of the viv. In addition, the constant moisture would begin to structurally weaken the entire setup with a few years.

In a departure from my previous terrarium construction, I decided the interior would be of all artificial materials - items that would not rot or disintegrate in constant moisture. I did a bit of DB lurking to confirm that styrofoam was a durable choice (I had already used some, hidden in the orchid terrarium, for supporting the stacked wood).

For those needing terrascaping-grade styrofoam in unlimited amounts at a very good price, look no further than solid home insulation panels. They can be had at home depot or lowes for ~$20 per 4' x 8' panel. I brought one home and began sculpting and stacking. The intent was to create a giant tree trunk that would coil around the interior of the terrarium and then spread into branches.

A few rounds of gluing, waiting and more stacking and I had built-up a nice trunk shaped structure of terrace-stacked styrofoam pieces. With the backbone done, I needed to smooth this very artificial looking structure into more of a naturalistic form. I started with spray foam but realized quickly it was only good for filling irregular voids - not so much for creating a smooth surface.

The breakthrough came when I visited the local plastic supply store and saw huge bags of styrofoam pearls. With a proper adhesive, these pearls could be mixed into a modeling material and spread/sculpted into place. Using the remaining epoxy as a binding agent turned out to be a good idea. 4 tablespoons of epoxy was enough to create a gallon of molding pearls when mixed. The initial mixture was a little too "runny" and did not stick to vertical surfaces very well - though it did handle horizonal mounding just fine. By adding a thickener to the epoxy, I was able to add just enough stiffness to the pearl mix.

The resulting material was lightweight, quick to dry, easy to apply to vertical surfaces and, when cured, was firm and strong. I discovered that a paper towel was a perfect appliance tool - it was like a non-stick surface that could be used to manipulate, place and sculpt the pearl paste (a material which otherwise stuck to gloves and any other object with the slightest contact). The paper towel method allowed me to sculpt a wonderful smooth surface of pearls to cover the angular tree layers.

Once complete, I had a nearly 7 ft x 2" tree trunk that weight about 15 lbs. Even better, this material would never rot and was still strong enough to support a person. As pleased as I was with the shape of my tree, the white color of the tree and the baby-blue of the walls (the color of the epoxy paint) was not so natural. I'll save the discussion of surface covering for the next installment...


----------



## thefish (Feb 20, 2016)

info on lighting up that sucker? really impressed by this vivarium


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

*The Build 3*

With the core of the tree sculpted, I made a few smaller branches using flexible stainless steel gasline covered in epiweb. I attached these to the larger boughs and then got to work covering the styrofoam trunk with hygrolon.

Getting the Hygrolon to stick to the uneven surface of the tree turned out to be pretty easy. I used silicone as a glue and thin nails to pin the Hyrgolon to the styrofoam. Once the silicone cured, the nails could be removed. I used this technique to cover the styrofoam the the new branches.

The styrofoam pearl mixture has a very rough surface with many small voids and depressions. Even by itself, the material has some water retentive capacity. The Hyrolon provides both additional moisture distribution but also a much better visual surface than glaring white styrofoam - and one on which moss can be more easily established. With the tree upholstery complete, I turned to the background. I covered this in epiweb using silicone to adhere the epiweb to the walls of the vivarium. 

For lighting, I debated an LED fixture - and I figure I will be getting one eventually anyway. I decided to go instead with a more aesthetic choice: I had gotten 3 150W MH lights from a retiring reefer. The lights were housed in a nice pendant fixture that I liked the look of. Moreover, I was unable to confirm that newer LED fixtures have the same height-penetration power of MH lights. With the lights sitting ~8 feet above the floor of the viv, I wanted to make sure I could grow decent moss even there.

Metal halide lights make a wonderful light (I'm using 5700K bulbs) but they are power hungry compared to LEDs and their ballasts can be noisy especially as they age. Once I satisfy myself that I can find an LED fixture for my prupose I will likely upgrade the lights (and slash my electricity bill ).

My next challenge was installing the misting system. My R/O system and the resevoir and pumps for the misting system live the basement below the dining room and I run their lines up through a heating vent. 

My issue was needing to place and secure the nozzles in a way that didn't compromise the water-proofing of the epoxied walls. I found a solution in "expanded PVC" - a lightweight signage material. I glued 2 layers of black expanded pvc together to get a 1/2" thick strip I could silicone to the corners of the vivariam. These strips would then hold the screws used to secure the misting lines and nozzles. 

I got the misting system installed none-too-soon: My deadline for construction had always been the local orchid show where I would be picking up a bevy of epiphytic orchids (plus a few other floral players like ferns and moss). I'll get to the planting of the tank in the next post.


----------



## Y0urbestfriend (Jan 31, 2014)

Thank you so much for sharing this with us. This is the best build i've seen so far. I'm sure it will inspire lots of people, cant wait for the upcoming updates


----------



## ruairidh_ (Feb 9, 2016)

Looks amazing! For lighting, you may have already seen them but have a look at jungle dawns led spotlights, a few of them might penetrate it? Or you could have a look at cree led and make your own custom leds from scratch (I think this way would be heavy on the diy side but from what you've done, doesn't look like it would be much of a problem!)

Sent from my D5503 using Tapatalk


----------



## CharValley (Feb 29, 2016)

Just received the plants this morning. Thanks kimcmich! They came in fresh and very nice looking. They will be going into the tanks tomorrow.

Thanks again for your patience with my screwed up account and sending the plants so quickly.

Charlie


----------



## Mike5401 (Nov 21, 2015)

Wow this should look great once completed, keep those updates coming!


----------



## erikm (Oct 1, 2015)

Amazing build. Subscribed!!


----------



## Darmon (Feb 25, 2009)

Beautiful viv. I was considering using a corner shower and stumbled upon your build. Any updates on the tank? Anything you might change if you were to do it again? And have the plants held up well considering the immense height of the viv? Thanks again for sharing this.


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

@Darmon,

The "Orchid Shower" is doing quite well. Aside from a battle with snails and slugs that I won via CO2 bombs, the tank has been very easy to maintain. You can see the attached pictures to assess the viv for yourself.

What would I do differently? That's a question I can answer quite exhaustively because I am in the process of building a replacement! I am a bit of an OCD perfectionist so the utterly non-fatal flaws of the current setup are enough to motivate me to build a new version to address them. What are the flaws?

1) Height: My metal halides are up to the job of lighting all the way to the bottom of the viv (you see the moss and ferns down there have grown very nicely) but they produce enough heat to spike the temps to over 85 degrees during the hottest days of summer. We only have a handful of weeks like that here in the cool Bay Area, but even that was enough to do-in some of the cooler preferring orchid species. A viv that wasn't 7 feet tall would not require such hot lights.

2) Verticality: The original motivation for a tall viv was to keep cats from being to enter it since I wanted an open top. That served its purpose - but a vertical viv doesn't have much horizontal space (no surprise) - and that means plants are more likely to shade each other and areas of the viv. You can see in the full-viv picture that there are dead spots, in shadow, where I have struggled to get anything (moss or plants) to grow.

3) Materials: I used all non-biodegradable materials to do most of the vivscaping. Given the size, I thought wood, rocks and soil would be very heavy and the wood would eventually decay and need replacement. What I didn't consider were the inputs to the ecosystem contributed by decaying wood. There seems to be some special sauce that real wood offers because my plants have not grown as well as in past vivs with more wood included. What little wood I have added as decoration has been the locus of the best growth of mosses and plants.

I am working on a new viv now that will be more horizontal (roughly 5' x 5' x 2.5' rather than the current viv's 3x3x7). It will also use wood for the vivscape. I have the luxury, living in California, of being able to collect manzanita wood which is very dense and decay resistant. I also considered the lifespan of such wood in past vivs and realized that most of my wood elements have outlived the vivs they were a part of anyway.

I'll post some images of the new viv build soon - I have a rough deadline of the end of February so I should have time to document and post soon...


----------



## Carolina Vivariums (Oct 27, 2016)

What Epoxy did you use specifically? 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

Greetings,

I used 2 epoxies. I used an epoxy paint, Sherwin Williams Tank Clad HS, and a marine epoxy, West System epoxy.

The epoxy paint is thinner but more easlily spread over larger surfaces so I used it for the plywood. West System is thicker and much faster setting - so I used that for filling gaps that needed strength and water-proofness and for gluing the styrofoam I used to construct the vivscape.


----------

