Build Journal for my first attempt

[SAVivEnthusiast]

Hallo everyone

Been browsing and drooling on the site for years now! Finally have the courage and the finance and most importantly the right animal for a natural viv.

So here is a pic of the cage.



Sorry for the crappy quality, was taken with my phone.

The cage is 90cm high. So nice and deep, Ideal for cresteds, which coincidentally is what i am planning on keeping in there.

First thing I did was start with the background, which meant paiting it with silicone. For this I used Den Braven Black Marine silicone. This was the only one readily available locally.





Now for my first question, how thick should the silicone be, cause light still comes through some spots, but it is all covered in silicone, will this be ok for GS background? Here is a photo to demonstrate what i mean.



Thats it for now, have to bake the wood. Also need to play around with my method of attaching the peat moss to the GS. I was thinking of using a mixture of Silicon and white spirits/mineral spirits/mineral turpentine.

Also, here is a picture of the one crested current setup and the crested that will go in the setup.

[SAVivEnthusiast]

Some new pics.

So the silicone is finished, it is there so that the GS background has something to stick to, GS is great stuff for those who dont know and is a form of expanding foam, I on the other hand is using denbraven expanding foam. worked so far.

First here is a picture of the wood and more or less where i want it.



The PVC pipe is a my "trunking", this will be used to run my wires through as well as some tubing to remove excess water from the bottom of the tank.



And here is a pic of the cage with the first can of expanding foam, only had one can, bought some more today, will take pics when the whole background is done. O and also the wood will be kept in place by the foam.



The next thing I did( Actually the first ) was start with the vines. First attempt was a fail, tried mixing silicone with peatmoss and then tried attaching that to rope. did not work. then went to brights to get some Xylene, which is a paint thinner and it is quite potent. I also got some clear silicone and some rope.

So here is what I started with.



And please, for the following, use cloves and something other than your hands to mix with.

So you get an old container, add 1-2 parts xylene to 1 part silicone. then mix very well. once you have mixed it it should be quite runny, and sort of look like this.



Now take a piece of rope and drag it through the silicone to cover the entire rope, use cloves and really rub the rope in silicone. then through the rope in a heap of peatmoss( dry or wet from my expierence)





The end result looks something like this



I also used air tubing, bit difficult to cover in peatmoss, but after three layers it looks good, my plan is to put some wire in the airtubing to make it more rigid. Will post pictures of this later.

The same method of doing the vines will be used to cover the background in peatmoss.

But that is it for now.

[FIT BMX]

Looks good!
I am using the same thing with the silicone and peat, but I used mineral spirits, it works great!

Make sure to post some pics of the vines in the tank.

[SAVivEnthusiast]

Thanks and will do. Will make a few batches today.

[chacmhaal]

Good beginning
Can't wait to see the next

[SAVivEnthusiast]

So, as promised. Sorry that there is no in between pics but it is not recommended to handle a camera with silicone hands :biggrin: So here is the completed cage



Think it came out came nicely. Like the coconut hides. There is also a coconut feeding bowl. Just a question, how do you prepare these? I just baked them...:shock:

And here is a teazer for the plant selection









Also the cage might now be used for Giant Day Geckos