EPIC Vivarium With a Water Feature Bioactive Tutorial!!

a what's hopping new friend OHS Troy here with the tropical garage and I'm back with another verb areum tutorial in this video we're going to be doing a variable feature really excited for the way this one turned out so stay tuned and enjoy the video also for those of you that aren't following me on instagram you probably should so head on over to instagram and follow me at hoof raga histroy annika now let's get on with this build alright guys I've went ahead and skipped a few steps that you guys have seen in previous videos of just me doing the great stuff in the background and also attaching the hi grille on to the great stuff if you haven't seen that video here's a thumbnail to a video on my channel you can go there and watch that video and you'll see everything this portion here is more about the water feature getting into that the drainage layer that I'm using is actually a aqua neat sponge filter pad what you're seeing here is the fine grade I do not recommend this water does not percolate through it easily or nearly as easily as the medium grade which you'll see I end up switching out to later on in the video the pump on using is actually Ted some 80 gallons per hour submersible pump I get off Amazon you can see here how small the pump is and you just cut a hole for it to fit inside of the sponge filter media and I've used some mist king fittings to make this work if you will it's not exactly pretty or perfect but it gets the job done in this application and then I just poked the tube or the outlet line right through the great stuff foam and then I put some more great stuff over top of it to keep it in place and this sponge filter mat there I'm just using to kind of disperse the water or distribute it or evenly so it's not just an even stream coming down that piece of wood but I'm really liking the look of this it's got a you know it does have some trickling effect it's got some drip edge going on on the front of the piece and as well in the back of the piece which i think is going to be a really cool effect in order to run the wire through the screen up top you are going to need to clip the plug so go ahead and do so I'm also going to show you how I hide the wire from the pump just going to take your standard razor blade and slice right into the sponge filter rat and the wire just fits down inside of it and it's completely concealed on the ground area and just like that you push the wire directly into the little groove and it completely conceals and you're good to go on to the next step and what we're good to move on in order to go through the screen up top with the wire you need to use something to poke through I just so happen to use a blue pen I had laying around and now we're gonna put the wire into place the next step is we're going to do some gorilla glue super glue gel along the backside of that wire and just press it firmly right into the high grill on so it stays nice and tight and here you can see I've gone ahead and reattached the plug to the wire and plugged it in we are up and running and the wire is completely concealed on the terrestrial landside and I do have the wire super glued now as you can see it's not flailing around like a flag in the wind and we're looking good so far again I use the gorilla glue super glue gel and now we're going to begin doing the hardscaping process as you can see I already had a couple pieces hardscaped into the background and for the water feature but I wanted to show you guys how I do this process it is tedious and definitely takes practice and you're going to be tinkering with pieces of wood and duct tape getting them propped up with the filter sponge media and take it just right I'm using a newer wood I've used a couple pieces of it before and some of my builds but not primarily as the main pieces this is manzanita wood and that's popular wood I know a lot of people use it I just personally have never really used it before but I wanted to try it on this build I got all the wood from the manzanita dude or the manzanita store on Facebook he's really reasonable and he's got fast shipping really cool pieces of wood and I mean he's got pretty much any size you could ever imagine or want or need so yeah I'm really happy I did so because I think the I think it came out great and you guys will see here and the later on in the video but I do think that the the overall scape is really interesting and I think it's gonna work out perfectly for the frogs I have planned but as you can see here I'm just really trying to prop this piece of wood up with some filter sponge media and I've got duct tape you know kind of securing it or it can protrude out but not flop around everywhere and once you've got it where you want it the next step is to start folding as you guys have seen in many of my previous builds I'm gonna start using the great stuff foam I use the window in door it's the blue can it expands pretty good for me I get and I get less big air bubbles in it so this was the stuff I use now it may work out differently for you but personally this was the can that I use and basically I'm just filling any gaps where you know I could find you know pretty much secure points for the wood so they stay in place and you know it's fine if they've got a little play or a little give but you know as long as they're implanted in place they really shouldn't shouldn't move you know sites are gonna be holding heavy animals or you know certain pieces or branches that are more flimsy than others that do move around a little more you know I'm not going to be using those to to support large remilia's or anything like that I'd put the larger milliards on ones that are really secure and really firm you're just going to repeat the process on the other side and with any other pieces that you want to find interesting just kind of find all kinds of creative ways to tape them up and get them set into place and once you've got it in the desired location and you like the angle and you like the look of it step back and take a look and if everything looks good from afar then get out the old handy dandy can of great stuff and start locking everything down [Music] [Music] and this is what the background completely foamed I'm going to let this cure and then we'll get into the carving process what you're gonna see here next so instead of using a tool or anything like that I just use my actual fingers and just kind of pull it apart I'm looking to get like a natural-looking muddy clay rocky type of texture so I really don't use the blade unless when I'm pulling it it's starting to pull off the background or something like that then all I'll use the blade to kind of make it come up and come off a little easier in certain spots but for the most part I'm completely carving all the foam here by hand you can see like here this is kind of a delicate piece that's you know kind of protruding out and doesn't have a lot of support so I didn't want to pull off a lot of that foam and you can see here I'm just doing the same stuff I carve around here just to make it if I'm like trying to make it look or take down some of the mass I guess sometimes a little carve and this is the hardscape completely foamed I excuse my son making lots of noise but I've got everything carved here and this is good to put a pretty good look of how it's gonna look but this is after I add in the medium grade sponge filter mat as you can see I kind of did a little bit more foaming just around where the foam meets the wood and I didn't want to have any gaps or cracks where the frogs could potentially get trapped under there as for the actual sponge filter pad itself I just carved it with these snap blades as you can see it's like a hot knife going through butter and it carves really easily and it's really easy to manipulate levels and certain gradients I'm really happy with this and I really do recommend everybody to try it out also I'm sure you guys are wondering about these weird-looking vine things that are covered in high grill on they're actually these 3d high grill on tubes that you can get at glass box tropicals calm this is my first time using them but I'm excited to use them you can manipulate them in any shape or form you want you can twist them bend them you know you could hide wires through them because they are hollowed out you know they're really cool products like I said I've never used it before but it's gonna promote plant growth really well with all the water wicking ability if I was you guys I would head over to glass box tropical calm and get them while you still can I also cut back the outlet port quite a bit I used a lighter to kind of melt it or make it malleable and till I got it in the angle that I wanted and then I splash cold water on it to kind of lock it into place and the next process is that you guys have seen me do before with the UGL dry lock and the original form and then also the quikrete color a cement color I used buff I also use charcoal on this build and all I can really tell you about applying this is don't be scared and just kind of just kind of throw a bunch of dry LOC and color on there you can blend it right on the foam as you can see that's what I'm doing for the most part just putting you know the buff with the gray dry lock on and I'll put splashes a charcoal on it and kind of blend it and just go back and forth until you get the desired color that you like it doesn't have to be very detailed if you don't want it to but it will look better when you have you know not such a universal color and just kind of have back and forth different shades different tones you'll have a better overall aesthetic and here's completed look of the foam covered in the dry lock you can see it just gives it a pretty natural look I didn't get super crazy with the color but I did pay attention to kind of blending the color into the actual high grill on I kind of matched that grayish brownish color so I think it looks pretty good and like I said I mean this is just your base so it's gonna look much better after plants and everything are on there but I do think this creates a very nice aesthetic for your base for your hard scape and now we've had a couple days for it to cure so I went ahead and added the water and gave a little test run of the water feature and I added some java moss some rikiya moss and you can see I just kind of covered the porthole with some rikiya to disperse the water and more of a natural flow pattern that's a little drip edge going on back here in this little puddle Creek ish type of thing and then this little Creek pond area in the front I think it's gonna look really really good when it's all planted and you can see how far the foam sticks up out of the water line that water level will never get higher than that I haven't maxed out right now it's but only plus it's a little less than an inch of water so you know the moss and if you did substrate it wouldn't be soaked all the time the nice thing about not doing substrate here is that it's not going to turn your water brown okay I just received my order from Michaels bromeliads and that was a new version of Malibu and this is a region fenneis Travis from another tank I end up removing it in the final escape but I did want to show you guys the difference between the region and the near brasilia as you see there that knee in brasilia has that stolen and the freesia doesn't the region just has a pretty elaborate root system which you kind of need to take to your advantage when planting it I end up removing this per million in the final vermilion layout but I did want to show you guys the process of how you can mount these easily to any sort of driftwood or like I said this is manzanita wood but you just kind of set the roots around the piece of wood to keep it in place you know where it's kind of standing upright and then you literally just take a zip tie and just clip it into place and you're good to go it'll keep it keep it very tight and sturdy and when it's filled with water it's not going to tip over and then the roots like I said on these versions they get pretty elaborate so the Pamelia it's really won't move anywhere I just want to show you guys a method of planting near brasilia onto driftwood rather than drilling a hole into it you can literally just superglue the actual stolen and part of the base of the plant to the wood just super glue some spag them down and then super glue the plant to the Spagna and then you can cover more with sphagnum or live moss wherever you want but it's a really easy and neat application you can also drill right into the driftwood to make a hole so you can shove the stolen right into the hole I don't end up keeping this portion of my layout but I did attempt it and try it to see how it looked and it looked ok but I decided it wasn't worth keeping so you just drill a hole right into the wood check to see if the stolen fits in and I saw my angle was way off so I did kind of change the angle a bit of the hole so it would sit there correctly but I still did not like the overall look so I didn't keep it but the last method that I use is literally the easiest you just carve an X into the hydrilla and then shove the stolen right into the background sometimes you do need to use toothpicks or paper clips or something to keep the vermillion propped up when it gets full of water and has some weight to it ok and this was with all five of the neovision Malibu mounted in place as you can see a remove that of regio finished rails it just blocked too much of the hardscape so this is how I have it or I had it originally and I wanted to show you guys the multiple applications of you know applying the bromeliads but a couple tips is I usually try to plant for millions in either odd numbers of either 3 5 or 7 so this I have 5 but like I said I think it's a little busy so it's probably going to change and you can see here the only Vermillion that stayed from the initial layout was the one on the left the one that's now on the right was originally super glued to that center piece of wood and I thought it looked better over on the right I think the background looks a little more open and this the hardscape shines through a little better okay you can now see that the thurber millet has been added and I ended up adding another piece of the manzanita wood I didn't great stuff it into place or anything like that I just leaned it up against the background but I thought this piece of wood just fit the overall hard scape pretty well and it didn't actually cover up that center piece of driftwood so yeah as of right now I think the three berm iliad layout is more attractive in let's the background and hardscape shine through a little better than when I previously had the five so this is what we're rocking with now and we still have to use moss and plants and see where it goes from here all right and my moss just came in this afternoon and this is the number one question I get from anyone on YouTube Instagram Facebook anything is what type of Moss are using who do you get it from etc etc so here you can see it's called low growing tropical moss that's all I can really tell you guys the source that I use wants to remain nameless so I'm not going to reveal that to you guys but it is my favorite Moss I use rikiya moss and java moss it's a little more readily available I do also use a tropical liverwort and this is from the same source as this low groan chop collage so as you can see it's simple you just put it into place and kind of Pat it down and I am also putting it on the wood section of this this build and normally I don't I usually just use it on the terrestrial area but I want to try growing it on the wood and see how it does I know girl on the hydro lawn but I guess we'll find out here in a couple weeks and once you've got all your moss in place it's time to give it a good spray down you just do want to spray it down really well this particular moss like I said earlier is very prone to drying out whereas Italy quickly so I do just make sure to spray everything down really good before we move on to the next step which will be the types of leaf litter I'm going to be using and also seed and nut pods which are really good for the microphone ax or bioaktiv the leaflet I'm going to be using in this build is live oak and also dwarf southern magnolia I recommend using multiple types of leaf litter different sizes shapes whatever I think it creates a more natural look than just having one type of leaf and then also you see here I have a bag of mixed seed pods which are really good for microphone springtails and isopods they last a very long time inside the vivarium and they also kind of break up the monotony of the live moss and leaf litter and it creates an overall natural aesthetic and all this stuff can be purchased from glass box tropicals com laying the leaf litter and seed pods down is as simple as just placing them in the viv and any way shape or pattern you'd like I just kind of go for a random natural look if that makes any sense just do whatever you think looks good and stick with that here's a good look at what mine looks like as you can see the multiple size and number of leaves seed pods I think give an overall very natural aesthetic and now I'm going to plant some orchids and I'm going to show you how to mount them onto in this scenario manzanita wood and similar to what I've been using all along I'm going to be using the gorilla glue super glue gel and it is completely safe for animals and plants so what you want to do is put a little bit of the superglue gel down on the wood and then just press some of this or you could use spagna Moss if you want i used the natural moss here and just press it into the wood and next you're going to want to take the orchid out of the pot and remove all the spagna moss or substrate whatever it's in and then we're just going to apply a little bit of the super glue to the orchid you can put on the actual leave the roots it does not matter and then just push it in and hold it and then as you're releasing kind of use your other fingers just in case the gloves get stuck to the super glue it off to kind of pry it off and I pretty much do the same step for the rest of the orchids so I'll just quickly show you guys the names and how I do that [Music] I'm gonna try and pronounce these words for you guys first off you have chlorophyll is Berg hammy eye this is a new organ for me this is Maz devaglia a fellow and we have plural phallus or LDI this is dry Adela crostata and here we have pleura thalis proliferates poly stick de and Restrepo trico glossa and moving on to the vines we have mark raffia um balata red mark raffia small round regular mark raffia on balata this is uh just to show you what having it in different light does to the plant this is Mark raffia sand tennis I it's kind of like a king mark raffia this is mark Ravi erecta flora this is peperomia a margin Ella it's actually one of my favorite plants this is peperomia Nikita here we have peperomia serpens and the large form this is peperomia serpens in the small form this is a philodendron species from Peru it's ash Engler this is philodendron Varrick awesome and this is dwarf African violet [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all righty friendos hopefully you guys enjoyed this one I had a blast doing this build I actually built this tank in the same timeframe for the variant build off so I kind of played along as well obviously I'm entering into the contest but this is the tank that I came up with in the same amount of time that when I announced for you guys so I hope you guys like what I created I can't wait to see how it grows in and yeah I really hope you guys enjoyed it so until next time don't forget to Like and subscribe and follow me on instagram at new Fraga histroy Annika Goldberg

Channel: Troy Goldberg's Tropical Garage

Views: 254,095

Keywords: DIY, poison dart frog, PDF, bioactive, vivarium, nature, dart frog, terrarium, paludarium, water feature, troy goldberg, tropical garage, troy frog, frog, frogs, orchid, plants, bromeliads, moss, frog moss, YouTube, 4k, tutorial, build

Id: YjlZeSKEe4s

Length: 25min 59sec (1559 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020