10/24/05 29 gallon simple paludarium construction thing..

MattySF · #1 (**permalink**) 09-27-2005, 07:32 PM

See page2 for update.. 10-20-05
.My space is limited so I'm making things for other people to enjoy. This way I can have the joys of building for the hobby while spending someone elses money. It's going to be a simple set up. Here's the guts.

devin mac · #2 (**permalink**) 09-27-2005, 07:48 PM

interesting. you have any sketches of what you're designing this to end up like?

MattySF · #3 (**permalink**) 09-27-2005, 08:14 PM

Yes Devin, I've had several sketches so far and It looks like since I now have wood rock and plants both on hand and in mind. It's time for another revision of the plans. Now that I finally have all of the hard scape I should have a better Idea of the final design. The outer tube will be consealed in great stuff (thanks to Bob Zarry's lost viv for inspiration on this method) and partitions of cork tubes are going to conceal the water fall. The Idea will be water falling from under a log. This is my fist waterfall and I'm hoping to avoid the soggy background. That seems to accompany some of the lace rock set up. That why I went acrylic. We don't have a homedepot in San Francisco, but thank heavens we have got a Tap plastics.

MattySF · #4 (**permalink**) 10-03-2005, 10:01 PM

Update 10-03-05

Supposed black pond foam (looks grey to me), great stuff, baskets, cork and cypress.

Black GE II silicone over grey foam and great stuff.

A few more baskets later that night and some additional great stuff

View from above.

MattySF · #5 (**permalink**) 10-06-2005, 05:54 PM

Making mud! Trimmed great stuff. Then brushed brown GE II silicone over the previous black coat.

right

upper right waterfall area

middle

left

[/img]

Cory · #6 (**permalink**) 10-06-2005, 08:08 PM

Why did you put two coats of silicon? One black and then Brown on top.

MattySF · #7 (**permalink**) 10-06-2005, 08:26 PM

Well Cory,
I guess in my mind I seem to think that the two different colors add more depth and detail to the foam. Also I think that using the two diffent types of colors over the pond foam makes it look more like Mud. Any thoughts on that yourself?

Darren Meyer · #8 (**permalink**) 10-06-2005, 09:33 PM

Hey just my 2 cents here , but silicone in 2 coats is a bad idea . As one layer cures the other layer dosen't have a propper bond to the other coat (it's not made to do that) you could run into a problem over time w/ the 2 layers pealing from eachother with the added moisture .
But it looks cool so far! Good luck .
Happy frogging ,
Darren Meyer

MattySF · #9 (**permalink**) 10-06-2005, 10:06 PM

Darren,
Thank you for the two cents. Now that you say that, I think of the times I heard about stripping old silicone before adding new. I guess in future projects if i want to duplicate this look I could could combined the two colors in one coat ( kind of like marbeling if that makes sense). This is only my third project so I definately am still learning as I go. I'll have to see if any brown comes off down the road. Now I can't claim it's a suprise if it does. Thanks for the complement thou. I'm pleased with the effect it had.

Grassypeak · #10 (**permalink**) 10-07-2005, 12:14 AM

Daren,

Have you actually seen silicone peal when applied one layer on top of another clean layer? I frequently cut sections out of the bottom silicone bead on aquariums in order to add glass dividers and such. I then add more silicone. I have never seen this peal or cause a leak (knocking on Wood). You would think that if the silicone didn’t bond with the original bead, there would be seepage where the old bead meet the new one.