# paludarium construction and creatures in it(video)



## dtknow (Jan 3, 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn6fCWSRQgA

Made this little docu on my 46 gallon bowfront paludarium.


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## Anastasia (Jan 4, 2012)

dtknow said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn6fCWSRQgA
> 
> Made this little docu on my 46 gallon bowfront paludarium.


Looks real nice, I enjoyed your video, Thank you for sharing!


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## SamuraiSid (Jan 6, 2012)

Thats a great looking enclosure.

Why did you choose to go with clay for the rocks as opposed to conrete or grout as I have seen many of DIY'ers use?


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## zonbonzovi (Jan 7, 2012)

Gorgeous tank, dt!  I love Cynops.  So inquisitive & feisty.  I attempted something similar with Ensatinas but failed to seal off the false bottom from curious burrowers.  I may give this a shot again with Taricha.


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## dtknow (Jan 10, 2012)

Sid: I thought of using grout or concrete but was hoping for something less permanent and something plants could grow into. The clay was not so much as rock as much as to provide a background for a riverbank type tank as well as keep the branches on the land section together(branches were stacked in their positions and then wet sodium bentonite clay used like mortar to keep them from moving too easily). The nice thing about this clay is that the cocofiber substrate readily sticks to and becomes part of it...it is really easy to hide if necessary.

Ideally I'd like to get my hands on some red art clay or similar colored clay and redo the background of this tank. 

zonbonzovi: Taricha would be great for a setup like this. I could see it with some pine needles redwood leaflitter and various plants from these areas like large ferns and shamrocksYou could try a small pump to emulate a seepage since they do sometimes occur near slow flowing water. If you do that though I would make darned sure the entire thing is easily acessible...pumps in paludariums tend to get clogged with debris.

What might work better would be to simply not hide the false bottom but end up with almost a ledge. Instead of walling off the water section with cork bark I could have simply jammed lots of branches(probably manzanita but whatever you can get your hands on would work) and rocks underneath it. Caulking the waters edge with clay to conceal the eggcrate/windowscreen as done in this video(you can see this fell off in a few places) would then provide the look of an undercut bank.


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