The Native Terrarium 2 YEARS Later

what's going on everyone Tanner here and today we're going to do terrarium update I know it's been a little while since we've done one but we just passed the two-year mark on the native terrarium from how to terrarium episode 3 as such I figured now was the perfect time to do the update before we get into the update though I want to give you some history on this terrarium so if you have a better idea of what's going on today to start we'll go way back to October 12 2016 this is around the time that I started taking YouTube seriously and rebooted the how-to terrarium series of course in episode 3 I showed you how to make a native terrarium in case you don't know a native terrarium is made exclusively with plants and other materials that are local to your area hence the name native if you want to learn the ins and outs of making your terrarium like this I'll link the original build up above and several other videos down in the video description I will say that the commentary wasn't as strong back then but the information is still extremely solid and relevant anyways when I initially set up the terrarium I really liked how it looked and it was extremely fun to make it's worth mentioning that I live in an area with temper plants as expected these plants don't always acclimate well to the environment of a terrarium so I went into the build with that in mind regardless I was still pretty optimistic about its future moving forward to the one month mark everything was starting to take off there was of course a machination die-off with the plants which is to be expected especially with this type of terrarium as I expressed earlier since I used the soil from outside as the substrate it was teeming with life including worms isopods and springtails however these critters didn't make themselves known until around this time in the terrariums life with their Advent I was really excited to see everything taking shape and possibly even more optimistic about the long-term success of this setup then moving forward two months the terrarium was looking even better most of the plants were well established in the microphone I were really starting to flourish there were a lot of spring tales some red worms a few isopods in the occasional millipede although the terrarium was still do pretty well at this time problems would soon appear jumping ahead a month that the four month mark is where things started to go downhill shortly before this update I really started to notice that the worms and isopods were eating the plants to extinction in an effort to keep this terrarium going I cleaned it up a bit and added some more plants the idea was to plant it so heavily that the microphonic couldn't possibly eat at all unfortunately these alterations just didn't work out in my favor now we'll fly eight months into the future to the one-year update this update officially ended the first chapter of this terrariums life although the microphon Oh were still thriving and doing well all the plants were pretty much dead over the course of time I observed the isopods in worms eating all of the plants that said it was clear that the isopods were simply grazing while the red worms were doing all the real damage in effect they turned this terrarium into a barren landscape perhaps if I would have let the term set without influence long enough the plant sort of grown back I wasn't about to sit around and wait though I wanted to take matters into my own hands so a few weeks later I decided to redo the terrarium I'll link a video on that up above in case you're curious to see the entire process in detail to recap I took all the components out of the jar and cleaned it then I reassemble the terrarium using all of the same materials as before since everything was healthy and well established I kept all of the same substrate rocks wood and even the micro fauna as you could probably tell my goal was not to completely redo the terrarium from scratch but rather to take a second try it what I had already started that said I did go outside to obtain new materials including plants and leaf litter these were then prepared and added into the setup my goal this time around was to feed the critters with leaf litter to deter them from eating the plants I'm proud to say that the solution appeared to have worked although the terrarium looks way different now than it did a year ago [Music] [Music] it's looking pretty good right well let's do maintenance and then we'll circle back and talk about some of the things that you just saw upon opening the jar the first thing that we're greedy by is a beautiful rattlesnake fern and some sphagnum Moss the funny thing is is that I have no idea where the fern came from I don't remember stocking the terrarium with one and I definitely didn't see one while reviewing all of the footage this past week so chances are that it was mixed in with some of the mosses and eventually became the plant that you're seeing here there's also a little isopod hiding out on this piece of driftwood I started by coming through the fern and removing any of the noticeable dead pieces then I removed all of the sphagnum moss I wasn't too crazy about it growing up through the fern and I think would look better elsewhere also it's worth mentioning that this Moss has been around since whenever I first made the terrarium so to my knowledge it's one of the only remaining original plants [Music] with this Tomas out of the way I proceeded to remove a large patch of dead pillow moss at this point it was just taking up space and there's no guarantee that it would even come back from there I cleaned off the moss buildup off of the sides of the glass with a dry paper towel like I've said in the past for optimal results in your terrarium you want to make sure that the glass is clean at the end of the day plants want light if your jar was dusty on the outside covered by Moss or debris on the inside or some combination of the two it will likely hinder the longevity of your terrarium I know that not everybody likes the idea of doing maintenance on a terrarium but at the very least I recommend cleaning the glass oh yeah and during this process one of our friends came out to see what all of the commotion was about once I got the glasses clean as possible with the paper towel I went over it again with the cotton ball dipped in dechlorinated water this will get rid of any of the remaining moss and polish the glass making it super clean during this process I tried my best to carefully work around the fern but inevitably it got moved around slightly as such I went back with my tweezers and made it look proper at this point the terrarium is in good shape and although I think it looks good now it would look even better with some more moss here's all the specimens that I'll be working with today I'll also be adding some accent elements from one of my hard scape bins don't worry the mosses and all of these were obtained locally as well so this will still remain a native terrarium through and through before adding any of these into the terrarium though I removed the acorn caps that were currently in place we'll add them back in just a moment though I started by placing the fern moss in the background then I divided the sphagnum moss and planted it in various locations throughout from there I added a piece of wood covered in thread moss I think this wide interest to the landscape and it's covered in moss what more could you ask for all the other patches of moss were then planted throughout the terrarium and strategic locations with all of that taken care of we need to add more leaf litter since this terrarium is pretty small it doesn't make sense to add full-sized leaves as such we'll break them up into smaller pieces so that we can retain the sense of scale then they are placed throughout the terrarium without intent I just let them fall wherever they may and adjusted when necessary to create a natural aesthetic next I place the Acorn caps from earlier back into the terrarium along with other accent elements all these items help create texture which in turn aids in creating a natural aesthetic plus these are all items that you would find in nature anyways [Music] we cleaned the jar earlier so we might as well go and clean the lid as well since the terrarium was open for about a half hour during maintenance we lost some of the moisture to address this I went and sprayed some dechlorinated water throughout the terrarium now that it's ready to be sealed up I'll go back with a microfiber cloth and give the inside of the jar of final clean finally the jar was sealed up and the exterior was cleaned with a microfiber cloth to remove any dust [Music] [Music] [Music] and there you have it the two-year update on the native terrarium I guess if you want to get technical this could have been considered the one-year update but given the history I think two years is more appropriate in my opinion the future of this terrarium looks bright something worth mentioning is that this terrarium smells great almost like fresh-cut grass the reason that I say that is that the small velarium is a good barometer on how it's doing each terrarium has its own smell and if that smell resembles the forest and that's generally good indication that your terrarium is doing well and will last long-term another indication is that other than the mosses we just added the plants that are in there now have been in there for at least 10 months or so I guess that's primarily the fern which is no doubt the star of this terrarium it's growing really well and I doubt I would like this one as much if it didn't show up on that let me show you something down in the false bottom real quick as you can see this area is jam-packed with moss and algae but that's not at all uncommon for a false bottom using large stones what I wanted to show you those that there's a section of liverwort down here as well as parts of the fern isn't that incredible you may have also noticed that while we were doing maintenance this terrarium is still teeming with life that's always a good sign that your terrarium is doing well it's something that makes it more enjoyable you don't always see them but when you do it's a pleasant surprise there's so much more I could talk about but I think that's a solid place to conclude as I said in the beginning of the video check out the video description I have a ton of videos on native terrariums down there and I even have one that shows you how to make a native terrarium for free if you're looking to make your area manned don't want to spend money or aren't sure where to start I definitely recommend checking that one out anyway so thank you so much for sticking with me on this one if you enjoyed the video take a moment and show me some love with the thumbs up it would mean a lot on that I greatly appreciate you all and I'll see you next time peace

Channel: SerpaDesign

Views: 1,062,025

Rating: 4.9012527 out of 5

Keywords: native terrarium, closed terrarium, terrarium, make a terrarium, how to terrarium, update, maintenance, temperate, bioactive, naturalistic

Id: t-ImWSLwnso

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2018