Planted Crestie Viv Build MKII

[Pendragon]

Hi,

Time for my next viv build

If you’ve checked out my Crestie viv, you will know that it was never meant for a Crestie, (I built it for Dart Frogs) and it is now getting to the point where it is getting unusable, due to the lack of access! So I have now decided it’s time for a new home for my little girl.

Now this build is going to be complicated…Very complicated. I normally make the viv build thread after I’ve finished the viv, but with this one there is going to be so much fart arsing around, I know I will forget the sequence in which it all happens. (I already have over 60 pics, and I’m not even a ¼ way through yet!), and it’s probably going to be the longest viv build thread in history, so I thought I had better got on with it now.



So, the weapon of choice, an Exo Terra 60x45x60, I thought I would go with the 60cm wide one as she is already in a 2" wide viv, and I couldn’t face down sizing her. I wont show a pic of the empty viv, I’m sure we all know what an empty Exo looks like.

So first up, lighting, and heating, now the first thing I regretted in my first build was not putting in a heat mat or cable, I used lights to heat the viv in the winter, but the lights burnt the Broms . And as the light I am going to use in this viv will be placed farther away (and not forgetting the Exo has an open top) than the lights in the current viv, so I wanted to make sure I had some backup in case the light on it’s own wasn’t enough to heat the viv in the winter.

So first up, the light, I’ve been waiting for an excuse to get one of these for ages, so here it is…



A Mega Ray 70 watt metal halide. I am going to mount it the same way as I did for my Sceloperus, so if you want to see how I made the bracket, check out my "Emerald Swift viv build". Though this one is mounted to the viv with a different bracket. So I will show you how I did this one…



I bought an angle section with the rest of the Aluminium bits, cut two 8" lengths, drilled two holes for the upright, bolted together and then covered in sticks like….







I then placed it on the back of the viv, removed the upright (to stop it pulling on the bracket) By the way, I attached the bracket to the viv with the upright on to make sure the holes stayed lined up . When the glue dried I reattached the upright…







And tried out the light…




Right, the curry has just turned up, so back later

Jay

[sambridge15]

good start but isnt it supposed to be 2ft safe distance for mega-ray im sure i read that some place..... probably wrong though i tried using a solar-glow exo mvb in my tank big mistake

also can you please stop making tanks!!! it was your last cresty build that encouraged me to make mine and i really dont have the cash to be inspired again !!!

[Pendragon]

Oh yeah, forgot to say, coments welcome... well, only nice ones from nice people, I don't want any negative criticism from arse...

Hold on...too late

Originally Posted by sambridge15

good start but isnt it supposed to be 2ft safe distance for mega-ray im sure i read that some place..... probably wrong though i tried using a solar-glow exo mvb in my tank big mistake

also can you please stop making tanks!!! it was your last cresty build that encouraged me to make mine and i really dont have the cash to be inspired again !!!

Hey mate, How's it going

Trust me, after this viv and my Beardie viv, that's it...No more..........Ever!

Yeah the min. recomended distance is 12", this will give you about 120uW/cm2 of uvb. Though this is for an animal like a beardie, for lower levels (like the sort of levels a Crestie would be happy with) they recomend about 18" to 24". But hey...What do they know



I've got to play around with the light yet, I will get the viv built, and then mess around with the light distance. But what is interesting about this light is the way it delivers the uvb, check out this pic;




The uv comes down in a narrow cone, so there is a high concentration of uvb in a very small area. So if you hold a uv meter at say 12" giving 100uW/cm2 of uvb and move the meter 3" in any horizontal direction, the uv will drop by a good 20 to 30 uW/cm2. So when the viv is built if I need to, I can move the bulb farther away, (up to 10" farther than it is now), but if that means I can't get the temps I want, and I have to move the bulb closer, then I can attach plastic leaves (like in my crestie viv) to block the "uv hot spot"

Also the mesh top blocks about 30% of the uvb;

No mesh



Mesh back in place;



So I've got lots of options to explore, when (if) It's up and running, I will post some uv level pics.

Jay

[Pendragon]

Right, the next post was going to be the heat cable going in, but it hasn't worked quite to plan
So lets look at some wood this is the pile I had to work with...



But I narrowed it down to this short list...



The gnarly bit went in first...





Though it looks interesting I thought it would be a nightmare to work around, and was right, the bit of wood I chose is a lot less busy, but even this is proving to be a tw... woops, a pain in the bum!

So the winner is...





What I liked about this bit of wood is the bark, moss (though I'm sure the moss will die) ant the thickness of the wood

So now to hold it in place. As luck would have it, it fitted in quite well, I only had to cut off a few inches off the top and bottom arms. The wood leans against the back wall, but at the wrong angle, so first job was to make a cradle for the branch to sit in, and hold it in place.

So I got a 4" chunk of kingspan and hacked it into the shape I wanted...



So now to make it look like rock, I didn't want to use my old favourate, Epoxy resin, as it's hard to recreate texture, and I didn't want to use grout as it's messy, and time consuming. So I went with paint, normally you paint on the emultion, then cover in a couple of coats of varnish, but I don't like the sheen you get on the finished rock. So for this build I tried mixing in the varnish with the base coat of paint, I also added a couple of teaspoons of sand for texture. This will hopfully toughen up the paint, and as it's going to have more coats of paint over the top, it wont look shiny.

....

[Pendragon]

I have changed the way I paint the kingspan after this bit, as I wasn't happy with how it turned out, so I wont go into too much detail on how I did it, I will go into more detail on the background.

So here it is with the first coat of varnish/paint...



I am also painting the skirting board, I have this as the kingspan sheet I have is too small, swo I have to use this bit to raise the wall. It will also show that the dry brushing technique used to make the kingspan look like rock doesn't work on smooth surfaces.

I painted two coats of the dark brown.

So the next coat...




What I have done here is paint the next couple of lighter coloured coats on thick, this is what I have changed on the main build as I didn't like the finished look, but here it is any way so you can see for your self...






And the final coat...



Here it is in place...







Job done

Next we will start on the wall...

Jay

[sambridge15]

lets face it once you start planting there is no end !!!! that is intresting about the light wish id tried megaray rather than exos usless excuse for a mvb !!!! looking forward to seeing the finished viv not looking forward to when I decide that my cresty also needs a new planted tank

[Pendragon]

Originally Posted by sambridge15

lets face it once you start planting there is no end !!!! that is intresting about the light wish id tried megaray rather than exos usless excuse for a mvb !!!! looking forward to seeing the finished viv not looking forward to when I decide that my cresty also needs a new planted tank

I tend to stear clear of any Exo terra lights.

I can't wait to see it finished too, it's driving me mad, I can't think of a good way to hold the brom pups onto the backing. I'm thinking of using silicone to glue them in place till their roots hold them up

Jay

[Pendragon]

Ok, just got time for a quick update

After securing the branch, it was time to start on the right side of the viv, this was going to be the second easiest side to do as there would be little in the way of plants going on this side. So as it is just fake rock (with the exception of a bit of wood) I will go into detail on how I make the rock.

Befor I started the backing I covered the back in silicone, and part of the sides, I didn't coat all the sides in silicone as I have done this befor, and it's a pain scraping the un wanted silicone back off. So as I didn't know at this point how much of the sides I was going to cover, I just did a bit.



So first thing to do is put the branch back in and mark out where the first bit of rock was going to go...



Then retire into my workshop come kitchen, and home to The "General"...



Here he is chilling out, though he had spent the previous 2 hours trying to chew all my good work .

Ok, so we've marked out the backing, and we've cut out the basic shape of the rock, then we mark out where we will cut the foam to make contors...And on to the first little mistake, but I will show you that later...





I use a Draper (plaster board knife I think?) knife to cut the foam, as it has a nice even thickness blade...

I just stick it in, and twist, this will cause the foam to pop out in a natural looking way...





After a while, you will get something like this...



I made this quite wide and flat, as it is going to be her feeding shelf. If you notice, I made it fat on the left hand top corner, I forgot it had to fit in between the two prongs on the branch...Doh!

This will be a recuring theme in this build, make something, find it wont fit, re do, or bin

So back to the workshop/kitchen/general's layer to take some more off the top left corner...




And with luck, it fits




Ok, I've run out of time...

Untill next time.

Jay

[cbarnes1987]

looking effin awesome... i cant wayt to see the end result of this!

[Pendragon]

Originally Posted by cbarnes1987

looking effin awesome... i cant wayt to see the end result of this!

Hey mate,

Thanks for the vote of confidence

And I can't wait to get it finished too, it's starting to keep me awake at night

Jay