# Budget Cork Panel



## cfaas (Mar 7, 2016)

Hello, I am looking to buy cork panel to line the back of a 55g horizontal tank, the back of the tank is 21in x 48in.
Creating my own background with foam is not an option for me. So, with that said, the options I've seen/read about are:

2x Exo Terra Rock Terrarium Background 18x24 - *$44 + shipping*
Amazon.com : Exo Terra Background, 18-Inch by 24-Inch : Pet Habitat Decor Rocks : Pet Supplies

2x Zoo Med Natural Forest Cork Tile, Extra Large, 18 x 24-Inches - *$60 + shipping*





5x NEHERP Tree Fern Panels 10x10 - *$50 + shipping*
http://www.neherpetoculture.com/decorbackgroundsledges


I think you get my point... this all feels to be a bit too expensive for my blood. 

My questions: 
My local home depot has a 3/8 in. x 2 ft. x 4 ft. Cork Panel for less than $12. My concern is that this board is not 100% cork, and that the other material wont hold up. In the description it is stated "High quality cork adhered to a fiber board backing". Here is a link to the product.
3/8 in. x 2 ft. x 4 ft. Cork Panel-205651 - The Home Depot 

Would this be okay to carve into and use as a background in my viv?

Any help/info/suggestions or other cheap options would be very greatly appreciated! 

Thanks


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## vachyner (Aug 10, 2013)

Go to hobby lobby. They sell 4 packs of 12x12 heat fused cork panels for a few bucks. I posted a thread a while back with my diy tanks I used them in. They gave the tanks a clean look and plants rooted right into them.

www.dendroboard.com/forum/showthread.php?t=212474&share_tid=212474&share_fid=4915&share_type=t

DIY Round 2

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## chefboyardee (May 31, 2013)

just out of curiosity, why isnt foam an option?


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## zerelli (Sep 14, 2009)

I suspect that you will find that this board has an extremely thin layer of cork and is not what you think. The description states that it is just over a third of an inch thick so you will not be doing much carving, more like scratching 



cfaas said:


> Hello, I am looking to buy cork panel to line the back of a 55g horizontal tank, the back of the tank is 21in x 48in.
> Creating my own background with foam is not an option for me. So, with that said, the options I've seen/read about are:
> 
> 2x Exo Terra Rock Terrarium Background 18x24 - *$44 + shipping*
> ...


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## cfaas (Mar 7, 2016)

chefboyardee said:


> just out of curiosity, why isnt foam an option?


I live in a small apartment, it looks way too messy for my personal taste I guess.. who knows, I'm in the very beginning stages of building so maybe with more research I will be comfortable using foam.


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## chefboyardee (May 31, 2013)

cfaas said:


> I live in a small apartment, it looks way too messy for my personal taste I guess.. who knows, I'm in the very beginning stages of building so maybe with more research I will be comfortable using foam.



for what its worth, a few cans of foam will cost you less than $20 (a little more if you use the black 'pond and stone' version) and will look a lot better than a monochromatic 2D sheet of cork. Its only as messy as you make it; laying down some newspaper should be more than enough to protect your table or floor. There are a ton of tutorial videos on youtube, worth a second look if you ask me


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## vachyner (Aug 10, 2013)

cfaas said:


> I live in a small apartment, it looks way too messy for my personal taste I guess.. who knows, I'm in the very beginning stages of building so maybe with more research I will be comfortable using foam.


You can always do a mock up the size of your tank out of cardboard, take that outside and build your background, then cut the cardboard off the back and silicone it into the tank. No mess inside the apartment. The cork tiles I used weren't thick, but it's 100% cork, no glue. They use a high heat process to fuse it together. Once the plants all rooted and the vining ones grew in you could only see bits and pieces of it back there anyway.

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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

"cork adhered to a fiber board"

Fiber board? There's one mystery glue. "Adhered to"? Mystery glue number two. Finally, I assume we are talking about pressed and formed cork, rather than virgin. That is a possible third, mystery glue.

You want cheap, simple, and frog safe?
Get a tube of brown or black (I like brown), frog-safe silicone, a credit card, a one gallon bag of loose tree fern fiber, and maybe a few odd pieces of natural, virgin, cork bark.

1) Put your tank on it's back, on a firm, level surface.

2) Quickly apply the entire tube of silicone, zig-zagged all over the back of the viv. The faster you work, the better this works, so you want to really cut a large portion off the silicone tube's tip, for a big, fat, bead of silicone. There's no art to it. Slap it on quick and sloppy. It might take 30 seconds to a minute. 

3) Spread the tube more or less evenly across the back pane of glass, using your credit card. Again, quick and sloppy. This should easily be done in less than a minute. Sloppy is good. If there are thicker portions it just adds a bit of texture to the finished wall. 

4) Quickly push your decorative cork pieces into your already planned out positions. Note that if your cork is not more or less flat, you may need a second tube of silicone to put some on your cork, right before you nestle it into the silicone back. Twist it very slightly left and right, as you push it in, so it's really secure.

5) Dump your entire bag of tree fern fiber, loosely spread across the entire back of the tank. Obviously, the tank still needs to be on it's back, or your tree fern just falls to the bottom of the tank. Using gloved (disposable latex style) hands, quickly press the tree fern fiber firmly into the still wet silicone. You've dumped a whole gallon in, much more than can possibly adhere, so if done right, you won't even get more than a smudge or two of silicone on your gloves.

6) Walk away. In 24 hours, stand your tank upright. Half of the tree fern fiber will fall to the bottom. Remove it for use elsewhere, and you are done.

If you do this right, planning out your cork placement, and having all supplies right beside you, less than 10 minutes goes into the background, from the time you cut the tip off the silicone tube, to the time you pull your gloves off and walk away.

You can pin orchids, broms, ferns, and other epiphytes, to the cork pieces. Vines will love clinging to the loose bits of tree fern and climbing up the back wall.

Keep in mind that your background does not need to go all the way down. Just down about an inch lower than your planned top surface of substrate. You don't need silicone or tree fern panel on the bottom, perhaps about 3" of the wall.

If you desire, after it dries, flip it onto a side, and continue the process. After the back and both sides are done, you have a full wrap around, background.
Some imagination with your cork decorations can make some stunning backgrounds.

This method eliminates any mystery glues and questionable materials. The only unnatural product is the silicone. Your tank was already built with silicone, so really, you aren't adding anything new to what's already going to be in there.

Do NOT use GE Silicone 2! Even if you don't accept that the organotins in it can cause breeding problems. There are reports that plant roots, and vine tendrils, will not cling to GE Silicone 2. Even after curing, people report the quick death of roots and tendrils trying to attach to the wall.


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

The hobby lobby compressed dark cork is a popular, cheap, attractive, workable, background. 12" x 12" Dark Square Cork Tiles | Hobby Lobby

Use food contact grade black silicone all over it to adhere it to the glass. If you like, you can use a pair of needle nose pliers to pull chunks out to make 1/2" channels. Fill these channels with moistened long fiber sphagnum for more of a "cork mosaic" look.


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## cfaas (Mar 7, 2016)

Broseph said:


> The hobby lobby compressed dark cork is a popular, cheap, attractive, workable, background. 12" x 12" Dark Square Cork Tiles | Hobby Lobby
> 
> Use food contact grade black silicone all over it to adhere it to the glass. If you like, you can use a pair of needle nose pliers to pull chunks out to make 1/2" channels. Fill these channels with moistened long fiber sphagnum for more of a "cork mosaic" look.


Thank you this is exactly the advice I was looking for. 

And thanks to everyone else for the suggestions too. I'm now considering going the foam route, still on the fence about it though


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## cfaas (Mar 7, 2016)

> "cork adhered to a fiber board"
> 
> Fiber board? There's one mystery glue. "Adhered to"? Mystery glue number two. Finally, I assume we are talking about pressed and formed cork, rather than virgin. That is a possible third, mystery glue.
> 
> ...


This is great, and sounds like it may indeed be the cheapest option! Thank you so much for writing this up.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

My problem with cork backgrounds is that they look fake and unnatural unless you use virgin cork or do a lot of work. What we should really ask is what exactly do you want to achieve. 

If you are OK with a very flat unnatural background I am of the opinion is it better to make it look like a purposeful decision and have such a look. One way to do that is to use tile for back splashes. You have a lot of choices from stone to glass in a variety of price points. Some of them are small enough tiles you can just cut the backer and make them whatever size you want without any tools. Then just fix them to the glass with silicone and be done. I have a couple vivariums with this that look great.


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## ruairidh_ (Feb 9, 2016)

There's also the option of virgin cork mosaic, get a load of virgin cork, break it up into different pieces, silicone each piece onto the background with a non anti-fungal and marine safe silicone about an inch but no more apart from each other. Once the silicone has cured, pack the gaps (and I mean pack) between the cork with sphagnum moss. This allows for easy rooting of plants and looks more natural than hobby cork. 

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## chin_monster (Mar 12, 2006)

Honestly, in the end I'd bet that after I'd bet that the cheapest (and fastest) route to a cork type background would be to use a couple of the zoomed panels cut to fit.

The only thing I can really knock them for is being basically flat. The cork surface is natural looking and they are cheap for the amount of coverage you'd get out of a panel.

Bulletin board type cork material really just doesn't look natural to me.

Cork mosiac filled with sphagnum moss is a good looking route to go but it actually uses up a lot materials and $$$ -it's just that costs aren't necessarily all at once.

I threw together a little 12X12X18 zoomed with the cork bark chunk and wedged sphagnum (no adhesive) method last week and was rather surprised at the amount of materials it ate up. The version I settled on ended up using (4) $7 chunks of cork and 3/4's of a 5 gal bucket of re-hydrated/ uncompressed long fiber sphagnum moss which is $20 or $30 (and some attempts wanted to use even more materials).

The apparent saving grace of multi component background builds is that we tend buy the parts in small batches -silicon one day, expanding foam another, peat/ coconut fiber another and all from different vendors, not to mention the tools that different build variations require and we don't tend to realize just much money we've spent along the way. 

Where as if everything is all on one bill -i.e. $60 + shipping for the zoomed cork tiles starts to look painful but it's everything all at once (and there's cheaper places than amazon for them Zoo Med 18 x 24" Forest Tile Background).

On balance if I were looking to cheap(er), fast and simple background for a 55-gal tank I'd buy a pair of matching zoomed cork panels (there are two variations they produce - dark tight grained one and a lighter more open patterned (think virgin cork chunks) and trim them to fit and be done.


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