Construction Journal of my new Paludarium

[lacerta]

I have been following your progress intently and so far it is looking good. I just picked up an XL Exo-terra at frog day and will eventually plumb it for a water feature so am particularly interested in your overflow system. Keep us posted on your progress.
George

Great work, I wish I had half the craft skills (and tools....) you do!

[Biznatch]

Lol yes, the tools I do have (Well they are my dads), but skills I'm not so sure :P This is the first stand I have ever made so I think it turned out alright.

I did finally get screws to mount the fans in the canopy and did so today. Tommorow I will solder the leads from the 2 fans together so they go to 1 connector and can both be powered by the single AC adapter. I have also ordered the 2x36watt kit from AHsupply and ordered the overflow/waterfeature pumps, foam and other misc. supplies from drfostersmith.com. So hopefully I can get everything up and running and do some work on the tank itself

It is looking really good. Hows the fit on your exo terra doors?

[Biznatch]

Well I did a lot of searching online to find the cheapest price on the tank and it turns out that reptile depot had the x-large one for 100$. And it also turned out that they were located like 3 minute from my work. So I went to the store and actually had them open the box first to check the gap. The doors are basically touching so I'm not worried about escapeing FF's.

Originally Posted by Biznatch

Well it's time for another update. I have been doing a lot of sanding/priming everything. I have also been doing some more testing on the overflow system. I am trying the 3rd pump out and it's just barely too much flow. It works great and is pretty quiet, but it's still too loud. The last one I had was almsot silent but the flow was too low and the pump was buzzing (Said 2' max head, but couldn't really handle 2').

But the canopy/stand/door are now fully sanded and ready to be painted. Tommorow I will do some final cleaning on them and paint them all black to match the rest of the furniture in my room.

Well today I was doing some more reserch on fans for the canopy and found that compusa had some nice quiet 120mm ones for 10$. This was good news since it saved me the 7-10$ that most online places wanted to ship fans. So I bought them and brought them home to test them. Not a tremendous amount of flow, but man are they quiet. Here is the link for the info on the fans. http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... pfp=BROWSE

After doing some searching in my room I found a AC to DC coverter than has an output of 12v DC with 300mA. This is perfect since each fan needs .12amps (Which is 120mA in case you didn't know :P ). I dont know what it was from but here is a pic of it.


Now the fans each have 3 wires. A red, a black and a yellow. The red is the +12v wire and the black is the ground wire. The yellow wire is the RPM sensor for fan controllers/motherboards. So basically you just ignore that wire and dont connect it to anything. Being the computer tech guy I am I had a spare male fan connector to use to hook up to the DC converter. Here is the pic of it just twisted on so I could test it to make sure it was wired correctly and that it worked.


This is the fan hooked up and running. I'm still amazed that the camera caught it so the fan doesn't looked blurred at all. I assure you the fan was spinning at full speed though. I used the receipt by the connector just to make sure the wires didn't touch during the test.


Now that I'm sure it works, I'm ready to solder the connector on. Don't forget to put the shrink tubing on the wires before you solder.


Here is it soldered together.


And now here is it finished I tested it again and it works great. Wow these fans are quiet. Now I have to find a 4" hole saw to cut the holes in the canopy.


Well that's it for tonight, hopefully I'll get everything painted tommorow and have another update ready.

Is there anyway that someone, like me, can install one fan at the top of a 55 gallon viv, on a store bought hood? I read through this post, and most of it seems really complicated, maybe I just got wirephobia. What do you mean by soldered? Can you reexplain that part, where you put the wire together permanently to make everything work. Thanks.
I wanted to put a fan becuase I didnt want the 55 gallon to have perpetually foggy glass. Thanks again.

[Moe]

Wow thats a huge fan. Are you sure a fan of that size is necessary?

Keep up the great work anyhow.

M.N

Originally Posted by Moe

Wow thats a huge fan. Are you sure a fan of that size is necessary?

Keep up the great work anyhow.

M.N

I suppose I would use a smaller one, or are you talking to Biznatch?

[Biznatch]

It's 2 fans actually :P With 120mm fans you can get higher airflow with less noise. So I got 2 that run at like 1500 RPM and flow a decent amount of air and they are almost silent. I'm going to be wiring it up so both fans go to a single connector in a few minutes so I can hear them both running at the same time. One of the fans does sound faster than the other so I'm going to have to use the multimeter to check and make sure it isn't drawing more current than the AC-DC converter can handle. I don't want it overheating and causing a fire now :P

And to solder wire you need a soldering iron (like 15-30$) or soldering gun(about the same price but a tad higher). And then you need solder. If you search online about it you can find more details about it and ways to do it. Now I have done lots of work with electronics so soldering is something I can do quite well. I use an iron because it's a bit easier to handle/use but it takes like 3 minutes to heat up.

[Biznatch]

Well with midterms finally over I have been finally able to start working on my tank again. Over the past 2 weeks or so I have been doing a lot of searching for driftwood for the back of the tank and haven't had much luck. Nothing I find on ebay seems to be what i'm looking for so i'm still looking.

Anyway now for the update I ordered and recieved my lights from AHsupply.com and they are great. Anyone who needs lights should order from them, they have an awesome product and the support is great. The stupid USPS took forever to deliver it (like 8 business days) so without even waiting to hear if the package was lost int he mail they shipped the order again and told me to open the first and decline the second box that arrived.

Here is what they send you in the 2x36 watt kit. I ordered the long reflector so I can cut it in half. I didn't even ask if they could send me 2 of the shorter ones but next time I will.


Now I wasn't sure if I wanted to mount the ballast in the hood or under the tank so I just wired it all up without cutting anything to test how hot it got. After like 30 minutes it was warm to the touch and the bulbs were just about too hot to touch. Wiring it together is simple and they give you a wiring diagram along with everything you need besides tools.


Here is after I cut the reflector into 2 pieces. I used a hacksaw and went slow since the metal is kind of thin and bends easily.


Now to reduce heat from the lights and to bring them closer to the tank I made spacers that go between the top of the canopy and the reflectors. The larger hold is for the screw to hold the spacer to the canopy. I only had 3" screws and the blocks were 3 1/4" long so I had to indent the hole so the screw started farther down. The small hole is to mount the reflector to the block.


Now here is the first reflector mounded in the canopy.


Now here is everything cut to legnth and cleanly wired. Everything is done except for the wire from the ballast to the outlet. I want to put in a switch for the lights but the AH kit didn't come with one (The only thing I don't like about it, but it's an easy fix). So I need to go to homedepot and pick up a switch then I can complete the install.


And bam here is the lights in action. All I can say is wow, these lights are bright. After looking at them to take the pic I was temporarily blinded and saw spots for like 10 minutes. I have a 4x65watt light setup on my 72gallon and taht doesn't hurt my eyes like these lights do.


So I'm very impressed with this kit and highly doubt I could have spent the same money or even more and gotten anything better. I had an incident while testing the overflow again today and all I can say is I should have finished all the kind of testing in the garage. So I had to wet/dry vac my carpet and have a fan blowing on it to evap. the rest of the water. But I think I got it working perfect so I can hopefully start working on the land area this week =)