Welcome to part 2 of Vivarium Rebirth! This one has been a long time in the making. There are 2 more episodes left of this series, and they will be released on July 27th and August 3rd (the next two Saturdays), so you heard that correctly, the WEEKLY UPLOADS will continue for two more weeks! If you ever make a background using this method after seeing this video, I’d love to see it, so feel free to let me know by sharing it and tagging me in it or something similar
Very nice, I have always liked the look of buttress roots in a vivarium. My only problem now is where do I put another tank, I have 13 already. LOL keep up the interesting content.
@@michaelmelo8075 There’s always room for more if you really want to :) Or you could clear out and restart the oldest or ugliest one you have like I did to make your own Vivarium Rebirth
Thank you for making this video, THE video everyone links for making these trees is just a series of pictures strung together. No actual video lol. Your tree came out great
I created a tree stump the exact same way by using the dendroboard thread as a guide. I wasnt sure how to seal the surface if I had painted it, so I went with blank concrete and let it cure for weeks in water with many flushings and even let it sit in a trashbag filled with pure CO2 for a week. Unfortunately the concrete lightened up quite significantly in the process and I kinda missed the dark grey color tone of the bark of strangle figs I initially intended to mimic. On a positive note, the pure concrete surface looks quite natural and not shiny at all, it even holds a good amount of moisture when sprayed on, so some roots and Marcgravia already started to stick to it. You mentioned maybe using drylok to seal the surface - is it available in sweden? I spent ages looking for it here in germany but never found it, or even anything like it. There is a company here that sells epoxy resin specially made for sealing vivarium structures. They also sell an additive that's supposed to dull down of the shiny look it naturally has significantly. Looking back I wonder if I should have went with the epoxy-route and paint the tree with acrylic colors beforehand. Now I'll stick to planting many, many plants to it that will hopefully create a natural look. Thank you for taking us in on your journey of creating a new tank. Your work is as always inspiring and I'm sure it'll look awesome in the end!
@@ngchengxuanaldredstudent1368 I calculated that one would be enough, but I still got two since they were so cheap, and I’m happy I did since I ended up starting on the second one (mainly because I had to do the big piece twice; I cut out one off camera that was too small).
@@Tropical_Tutorialsdo you have any other brands that are recommended to be the color/varnish of the project? Im hesitant because im afraid most of the colorings in my country are toxic to the frogs..
@@ngchengxuanaldredstudent1368 As I mentioned, you could neutralize it first (see my video about hypertufa where I took this route), eliminating the need to fully seal it, and then just use acrylic paint (or maybe drylok, but I don’t know how well it works on cement). Perhaps epoxy is an alternative to seal it, but I’m not sure how good it would look.
@@ngchengxuanaldredstudent1368 No, but hypertufa also is cement based and has an alkiline surface due to the cement, similar to that of the cement slurry tree. The strategies for either a) sealing or b) neutralizing it (with acid treatment or by leaving is in the rain/washing it plenty of times to leech out the alkalinity) are similar for both techniques (with the tree, I decided to seal it, and with the hypertufa, I decided to treat the surface to neutralize the pH, which I talk about in my other video, but you could of course do vice versa)
@@sirsever3234 Probably easier to go through the video and take notes on each thing since a lot of them are optional/replacable. But the main things are: - 4 styrofoam pieces (just for the workspace) - Toothpicks and wooden skewers - Fleece blanket (I used Thorgun from IKEA) - Portland cement (“normal” cement) - Some bigger wooden sticks (or sturdy metal wires or something else) for hanging the stem - Corrugated pipes (or something similar) for the roots - Peat moss (or coco fiber) for the texture layer - Yarn threads (or other threads) for vines (optional) - MakeMake Colour Fix + Various pigments (though I’d probably prefer using something else as the varnish and colour, like waterglass for the varnish and acrylic paint for the colors)
Welcome to part 2 of Vivarium Rebirth! This one has been a long time in the making. There are 2 more episodes left of this series, and they will be released on July 27th and August 3rd (the next two Saturdays), so you heard that correctly, the WEEKLY UPLOADS will continue for two more weeks!
If you ever make a background using this method after seeing this video, I’d love to see it, so feel free to let me know by sharing it and tagging me in it or something similar
Very nice, I have always liked the look of buttress roots in a vivarium. My only problem now is where do I put another tank, I have 13 already. LOL keep up the interesting content.
@@michaelmelo8075 There’s always room for more if you really want to :) Or you could clear out and restart the oldest or ugliest one you have like I did to make your own Vivarium Rebirth
Looking forward for the next episode mate.😀👍
Thank you for making this video, THE video everyone links for making these trees is just a series of pictures strung together. No actual video lol. Your tree came out great
When you watch in the wrong order 😂 2,3,4,1 Loving this series
Thanks again, a very interesting and seemingly simple way of building such an awesome hardscape.
I created a tree stump the exact same way by using the dendroboard thread as a guide.
I wasnt sure how to seal the surface if I had painted it, so I went with blank concrete and let it cure for weeks in water with many flushings and even let it sit in a trashbag filled with pure CO2 for a week. Unfortunately the concrete lightened up quite significantly in the process and I kinda missed the dark grey color tone of the bark of strangle figs I initially intended to mimic.
On a positive note, the pure concrete surface looks quite natural and not shiny at all, it even holds a good amount of moisture when sprayed on, so some roots and Marcgravia already started to stick to it.
You mentioned maybe using drylok to seal the surface - is it available in sweden? I spent ages looking for it here in germany but never found it, or even anything like it.
There is a company here that sells epoxy resin specially made for sealing vivarium structures. They also sell an additive that's supposed to dull down of the shiny look it naturally has significantly. Looking back I wonder if I should have went with the epoxy-route and paint the tree with acrylic colors beforehand. Now I'll stick to planting many, many plants to it that will hopefully create a natural look.
Thank you for taking us in on your journey of creating a new tank. Your work is as always inspiring and I'm sure it'll look awesome in the end!
got snilk
I don’t know how to interpret this comment correctly, but sure!
How many pieces of thorgun did you use?
@@ngchengxuanaldredstudent1368 I calculated that one would be enough, but I still got two since they were so cheap, and I’m happy I did since I ended up starting on the second one (mainly because I had to do the big piece twice; I cut out one off camera that was too small).
@@Tropical_Tutorialsdo you have any other brands that are recommended to be the color/varnish of the project? Im hesitant because im afraid most of the colorings in my country are toxic to the frogs..
@@ngchengxuanaldredstudent1368 As I mentioned, you could neutralize it first (see my video about hypertufa where I took this route), eliminating the need to fully seal it, and then just use acrylic paint (or maybe drylok, but I don’t know how well it works on cement). Perhaps epoxy is an alternative to seal it, but I’m not sure how good it would look.
@@Tropical_Tutorialscould i use hypertufa to cover the buttress root? Is that what you already meant?
@@ngchengxuanaldredstudent1368 No, but hypertufa also is cement based and has an alkiline surface due to the cement, similar to that of the cement slurry tree. The strategies for either a) sealing or b) neutralizing it (with acid treatment or by leaving is in the rain/washing it plenty of times to leech out the alkalinity) are similar for both techniques (with the tree, I decided to seal it, and with the hypertufa, I decided to treat the surface to neutralize the pH, which I talk about in my other video, but you could of course do vice versa)
parts list? thx
@@sirsever3234 Probably easier to go through the video and take notes on each thing since a lot of them are optional/replacable. But the main things are:
- 4 styrofoam pieces (just for the workspace)
- Toothpicks and wooden skewers
- Fleece blanket (I used Thorgun from IKEA)
- Portland cement (“normal” cement)
- Some bigger wooden sticks (or sturdy metal wires or something else) for hanging the stem
- Corrugated pipes (or something similar) for the roots
- Peat moss (or coco fiber) for the texture layer
- Yarn threads (or other threads) for vines (optional)
- MakeMake Colour Fix + Various pigments (though I’d probably prefer using something else as the varnish and colour, like waterglass for the varnish and acrylic paint for the colors)