# a couple of my enclosures



## damien00016 (Feb 19, 2012)

hey everyone at arachnoboards. i've been using this forum for years. its a great source of information about this hobby that i truly love. never really posted anything on the forum but when i saw the cool stuff on the vivarium and terrarium section i thought i'd show off some of my enclosures. 
i make them all from glass. it takes a while to make each one because i cut and set every piece myself. i know a lot of people use plexiglass and acrylic but i never cared for those materials. they always seem to scratch too easily. plus i really like the look of the old style terrariums. i keep all my adult female T's in setups similar to the ones you see here. i would have posted a pic of of my 12x12x18" style i keep my Avic in but i haven't cleaned the glass in there in a while and any Avic keepers out there know how messy that genus can be. 

12x9x9" for my mid size females. 


12x15x12" just completed this front door opening enclosure for one of my larger girls. the doors are kept in place buy a single strong magnet at the top. those two obnoxious black circles by each of the hinges are apart of another idea i had but didnt work out. sadly when working with resin you sometimes have to live with your mistakes. i thought it best to keep them attached instead of going through the trouble to take them off. it is possible though. but in this case not worth it.



it is possible to drill holes through glass but its time consuming and each hole runs the risk of breaking the whole piece of glass. so i simply put a gap in the glass. and cover that with window mesh to allow for ventilation.

Reactions: Like 2


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## SamuraiSid (Feb 19, 2012)

Nice stuff.

Is the resin used soley to attach the hardware, or was it used in conjunction with silicone to connect the glass panels?

Reactions: Like 1


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## damien00016 (Feb 24, 2012)

yeah the resin is only used for attaching the hinge hardware. loctite 5 minute cure resin is really tough stuff, highly recommend it. but you shouldn't ever use it to attach the main pieces of glass to each other. resin has virtually no flexibility where as 100% silicone stays flexible forever. 






couple of forward shots of the 12x15x12" enclosure that was empty a week ago. in the second shot you can see the magnetic locking mechanism i built. its really simple but it works. using resin i attached a 25 pound rated rare earth magnet to the underside of the top of the enclosure. i then used an L shaped bracket from the hinge hardware section from lowes. i used some more resin to attach a little handle to the L bracket. when i want to open the door i simply pull the L bracket off the magnet and the doors swing open. and dont worry, that 25 pound magnet keeps a pretty good hold on the bracket so theres no chance a tarantula could push its way out from the inside. oh and to the right of the second shot is a smaller enclosure i built a couple years ago with an A. bicoloratum. shes a great tarantula, just wish she put on more than a centimeter per year in growth. 


i use these really thin LED puck lights from lowes to give it just enough light for viewing. these things are great. produce no heat and because i replaced the stock power supply with a variable power supply from fry's i can dial in the brightness level so as to not disturb the tarantula. in this shot you can also see some red plastic that i put at the far end of a cork tube i put in the tank. the cork tube stretches a good 10 inches all the way to the back of the enclosure and the red plastic lets me take a look at the tarantula whenever she decides to go deep without disturbing her.


a little better shot of the LED's but you can also the ventilation aspect of the tank. theres about an inch of space above the top of the tank so theres enough air exchange. 


and the star of the show, presenting my all time favorite tarantula, Brachypelma klassi. just got this girl in this week. shes a real shy girl so far but she made the cork tube her permanent home within 4 hours of being in this new enclosure so i'm happy. hoping that shes in premolt because she has yet to eat.

i was thinking about making another enclosure like the one pictured in the next couple weeks. would anyone like me to do an in depth tutorial? i've got the process down pretty well now. the enclosure you see pictured here took about a week to put together. but i wasnt working on it every day.


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## voldemort (Feb 24, 2012)

nice!!!

 with lightings=perfect


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## SgtSparkles (Feb 28, 2012)

on their own i rarely perfer all glass setups but with the lighting glass is so stunning, great job


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## SC Tarantulas (Feb 28, 2012)

Very nice work! Impressive.


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## Danielson (Mar 5, 2012)

You should add some plants in there, green makes everything look even better!


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## Zman181 (Mar 5, 2012)

Nice!!!  Such an impressive clean job.


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