Terrarium: 1. An enclosure in which to keep small land animals. 2. A glass container enclosing a garden of small plants.
Vivarium: 1. A terrarium used especially for small animals. 2. An enclosed space for keeping and studying animals in an environment corresponding as closely as possible to the animals natural environment.
Paludarium: 1. A terrarium that contains running water. 2. A terrarium that is half water and half land.

Basically, they're all ways of saying an enclosure with animals and/or plants in it. In spite of the dictionary's definitions, most people say terrarium when talking about a tank of plants, and vivarium when plants and animals are kept together in a natural type setting. What I'm building is technically something between a vivarium and a paludarium. I'm just calling it a terrarium because most people know what a terrarium is. :-) Besides, for the first couple of months after it's planted, there won't be any animals in it anyways, to give the plants a chance to get established before getting walked on. Then I'll probably be putting a couple of red-eyed tree frogs in if I can find them, and a fire-bellied newt.

The reason I'm making this page is because I didn't find a whole lot of step by step plans for this sort of thing on the net. Most of the pages put there give basic setup, and tell you how easy it all is. And I'm sure it can be easy... when you live someplace that you can actually find all of the supplies, like ready-made backdrops (and when people make their own, why oh why can't they tell you how they did it??) and specially mixed soil. Not to mention the plants. So anyway, here's the set-up of my terrarium so far.

1.) The Tank. First of all, I needed a tank. I had a couple old aquariums around, but they're both pretty small, and I wanted something larger. My dad had some old 1/4 inch glass sheets lying around, so we took them in to a glass place to get cut for the sides and bottom. There wasn't quite enough for the size I wanted, so we got them to cut another piece out of salvage glass. Then we siliconed it together, holding it in place with clamps to dry. The tank ended up being around 55 gallons. I'll check the exact measurements tomorrow. Just as a side note: unless you already have all the equipment (long clamps and corner clamps), it can be really hard to make your own tank. The bigger the tank, the harder it is to get it straight and keep it still until it dries. In the end, it can be cheaper to just buy one.

2.) The Top. It's important to have a good top on a terrarium, especially if there's going to be animals in it. It has to be escape-proof, and still allow for decent light and ventilation. Since my tank is not a standard size, we made one out of a single piece of MDF (which is pressed wood particles), metal screen, and plexiglas. The top has three cutout sections... a narrow one at the front, and two wider ones at the back. A router was used to recess the area around the cutouts, just the top of the front one, and both on the top and the underside on the two rear ones. The back two are covered by .4 inch square (1 centimeter square) wire, stapled and siliconed on the underside recess. We also made smaller screens from metal mosquito screening that fit overtop, and rest on the top recess, so if I have to feed an animal small insects they won't escape. The front cutout has two pieces of plexiglas that rest in the recess, both hinged. One or both can be opened, depending how much room you need. The top has a lip on it, so it fits tight on the tank. MDF is also quite heavy, so most animals small enough to live in the terrarium could never lift it. We routed all the corners to make them rounded, and spray painted it with two coats of a fast drying, water soluble paint to seal it up.

3.) The Backdrop. The hardest part so far. I couldn't seem to find anything really useful on how to make a backdrop (that wouldn't take up half the room in the tank). Also, I couldn't find a place in Canada that sells Tillandsias (air plants), so I decided I had to make a backdrop that could hold some soil. That way I can put regular plants up the back of the terrarium. My first thought was to make a plexiglas back, with ledges to hold the plants. Then I found out how expensive plexiglass is (like $7.00 a foot!). Then my dad suggested that we use some marble-colored laminate (about $2.00 a foot) left over from a kitchen counter he refinished. We cut out double the number of pieces needed and sprayed the back sides with adhesive. Then we stuck the pieces together so that they all were doubled up and showed the marble coloration on both sides. This not only made the pieces stronger, but also water-proof (we tested it by soaking a left-over piece in a can of water for a few days). Then we used spots of hot glue to set the pieces together to form a double terrace, and then ran silicone along the seams to seal it. On the left side of the backdrop, the terraces are lower down, so that when I set it up with a waterfall, there will be two pools. On the diagram, the pieces that are labeled as extra support also keep the whole thing away from the back of the tank a bit. Once it's done, there'll be a water bed heater back there to help keep the temperature up.(It's really hard to explain exactly what it looks like, and the diagram's a little confusing... I'll have real pictures up as soon as they're developed). The nice thing about using the laminate, is that while it's still got a good weight to it, it's not so heavy that it's hard to lift. Of course, I plan to silicone pieces of wood and rock to it to make it more realistic, but by then I won't have to be taking it in and out of the tank, and moving it around to retouch the seals.

4.) The Water and Substrate. I haven't actually gotten this far yet. I do have a container that the soil will go into... it's a plastic plant container that will keep the soil separate so the water doesn't cloud up. Because of the size of it, it fits in front of the backdrop, and still leaves room at the front of the tank and to one side for the water. I'm going to silicone small pebbles to the sides of the container so the plastic can't be seen, and rocks will overhang the lip of it. There will also be small rocks on the bottom of the water side, and I have a small pump that fits inside the backdrop for the waterfall. The water will come out of a tube above the first pool in the backdrop. I got most of the rocks I'm using (about half of a ten liter pail {that's around 2.6 gallons}) free of charge from a gravel pit.

5.) Plants. I have no idea where I'm going to find all of the plants I want... or even some of them. I want to put various Tillasandias (air plants) in, as well as resurrection fern, spanish moss (also a Tillandsia), and some sort of tropical terrestrial moss. The thing is, I don't know where the heck I'm supposed to find them in Canada. No one seems to sell them, at least not in Saskatchewan. *sigh* I'll probably end up having to make do with whatever I can find. You know, I've seen some really nice pictures of planted terrariums on the net and in books. But they never say what plants they are! How annoying is that?

6.) There'll be more when I get to that point...

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