Mirya's Cardiff Curiosity

[Mirya]

I have had a Current USA Cardiff AIO for a few years. It's never seen water. I finally have plans for it though. A few months ago I gutted it:

 

My hands were pretty scrapped up by the time that was done! This week I've put a little more work into it. I only have two band-aids on though from my adventures this week. I'll get some more pictures of what I did this week up shortly.

[Spiderguardnano]

Drilling it?

[vlangel]

I have had a Solana AIO for a few years. It's never seen water. I finally have plans for it though. A few months ago I gutted it:

 

My hands were pretty scrapped up by the time that was done! This week I've put a little more work into it. I only have two band-aids on though from my adventures this week. I'll get some more pictures of what I did this week up shortly.

The suspense is killing me, please reveal your plans for this tank?

[Mirya]

Drilling it?

 

Yup, there was some drilling...

 

 

It was a fairly terrifying experience. Never drilled glass before. And this is a funky bullet shaped tank that isn't made anymore. So, a) it was hard to devise a way to rest it to be able to drill into the back panel and if I broke it there would be no easy way to replace it. What I ended up doing was I put on my big girl pants, then I draped a big blanket across the top of one of my Brute containers that I use for water changes. I rested the curved face of the tank into the blanket. (Kudos to one of my LFS owners suggesting this to me when I asked him for suggestions how to drill the tank!) The Solana is a little taller than the Brute is wide, so I still didn't have the back glass perfectly flat. I built a pretty tall damn of putty around the hole to hold the water to compensate. Between the angle and my nerves though, the bit did a bit of walking on the glass before I got it seated well. Fortunately, no one will ever be able to easily see this.

 

 

But then, after it was drilled, I did this:

[Spiderguardnano]

Thinking of gutting my innovative marine 25g lagoon what do you think?

[vlangel]

I am clueless what you have in mind for this tank?

[kimberbee]

MORE!! Tell us more!!

[gena]

Mirya is one of the most clever people on NR...this is gonna be good whatever it may be .

[ReefWeeds]

Mirya! More info! Stat!

[Mirya]

Mirya! More info! Stat!

 

But I wanna see if I can hit 30 pages before this gets wet!

 

Thinking of gutting my innovative marine 25g lagoon what do you think?

 

Do it!

 

Those new lagoon tanks have some sweet dimensions, but why not open it up more and give yourself a sump. You do need a bit of patience and band-aids to complete the gutting process. I ended up using a Dremel to cut out a bunch of the plastic to give you more space to work in. Then razor blades to cut the silicone. Such a pain. To finally clean-up the silicone residue, keep working at it with fresh straight edge razors blades and wipe down the glass with rubbing alcohol.

 

The black background I put in the tank is actually black silicone. I really gassed myself with acetic acid fumes applying that inside the tank! I placed that layer of silicone in there to better adhere the background I built into the tank. My initial plan had been to have the background wrap around the edges a little, hence the angled sides. However once I started building up the background, I realized I wasn't going to go up the sides so much. Which meant cutting all that silicone off. I sliced myself multiple times with the razor blade in the process. 2 of which needed band-aids.

Mirya is one of the most clever people on NR...this is gonna be good whatever it may be .

 

 

Awe. Thanks Gena!

[ReefWeeds]

 

But I wanna see if I can hit 30 pages before this gets wet!

 

 

 

Best response ever

[Mirya]

Best response ever

 

Glad I didn't offend. I honestly have read all of your 66 PNP thread! It is making me so anxious for when I set up my upgrade for my Floridian Flower Garden and have to plumb the sump!

 

Here's another picture of the Solana Cardiff work-in-progress as I install the background... I made such a mess everywhere working on this!

 

EDIT: I realized this is the Cardiff tank by Current USA. The Solana was the other tank Current used to make with the same footprint, but was rectangular. So I had to change the thread title to a new alliteration.

[FlowerMama]

My guess is froggies???

[Mirya]

My guess is froggies???

 

Yup! This is going to be my dart frog vivarium. Like the frag tank, I'm not actually going to put inhabitants in this tank 'til I know about my job future. But I figure I have time for the set-up part now! The frogs I'm eventually planning on getting are a morph of Dendrobates tintorius called "Robertus." There is a lot of color variation in them, but here is an example:

 

So, to build the background for my vivarium I purchased a cast resin background from Vivarium Works. To make the casts, Scott, the proprietor, goes out to locations and molds actual rocks and roots. The one I purchased was molded from banyan tree roots in Rainbow Falls State Park in Hawaii. This is an example of the background I bought before cutting it down for my tank:

 

I used Great Stuff insulating foam to fill the void behind the resin and also used the Great Stuff to adhere some tree fern panels to the back of the tank not covered by the resin background. That was incredibly messy and kinda fun stuff to work with. Good things I have a stockpile of latex gloves, cause that stuff does not wash off your skin. Here is the finished background:

 

The yellowish stuff at the bottom is some exposed Great Stuff foam. It will be covered by substrate and not visible when the tank is completed. The next step I have to work on is making a lid for the tank. Dart frog vivariums need to keep a good deal of humidity in the tank, yet still have ventilation. But the ventilation also has to keep fruit flies (the frog's food) inside.

 

I'm thinking of doing something along these lines:

- The orange rectangle is a piece of glass/Lexan I would permanently silicone into place.

- The green represents some living hinge material.

- The yellow is a piece of glass/Lexan I could lift to access the tank.

- The red circle is the entry for the MistKing nozzle.

- The blue areas are where I was thinking I could put ventilation slots.

 

I need to work out the details on the ventilation slots and how to put in a circulation fan. I'm open to any input from froggers on here! Since I'm going back to Raleigh this weekend, I won't be able to work on the vivarium for a few weeks.

[FlowerMama]

Sounds like you're getting it all figured out really well! This is going to be fun!

[gena]

Very cool!!!!! Maybe you said, and I missed it, but what is the hole that you drilled out for?

[Mirya]

Very cool!!!!! Maybe you said, and I missed it, but what is the hole that you drilled out for?

 

Oh, I don't think I specifically said... The hole is for a bulkhead to allow drainage. The humidity is kept so high with misting, that there is a decent amount of water accumulation in dart frog vivariums. The substrate of the vivarium is layered like so:

 

The drainage layer catches any water that flows through the substrate, keeps the substrate layer from becoming saturated, helps to sustain a healthy microfauna population (bacteria and springtails -- kinda like a reef aquarium's bacteria and copepods!), and keeps humidity stable within the enclosure. I'll be using a product from New England Herpetoculture made out of recycled glass that is super lightweight for my drainage layer. With the bulkhead I can either attach a tube so it can constantly drain whenever the water table reached the bulkhead height or I can do this:

[gena]

Got it! I figured it was drainage. Very cool!!!!!

[FlowerMama]

So it's like building a retaining wall w/ a drain. Got it!

[TJ_Burton]

Its better to toss a ball valve on the bulkhead than turning it up or down.

Looks like this is going to be a rad viv!

[Spenseriana]

Update, please!

 

Also, we sure do miss you around the Columbus area. Hope all is going well down in NC!