Transcript
Intro
[Music] good morning reptilians welcome and welcome back to the reptilian den i'm elle and this is den i don't know i don't know how usually uh so recently uh l was part of a contest contest challenge by josh's frogs and vision products vision products and because of that we had the opportunity to get our hands on some of their materials which was kind of exciting so we were able to make a background yeah this is the very first naturalistic foam background that we have ever done in a tank and it was a lot of fun we did it together it wasn't just me this video is not sponsored by josh's frogs but in fact it's sponsored by us me and her she's somewhere around here if you didn't know already we're on etsy and we have lots of reptile related products including tongs we have little boots that lift up the tanks so that you can put the heat pad under and they're not cords aren't getting all frayed up and wrist damage or anything like that we have feeding ledges tons of stickers and decals if you wish to support us you should definitely support yourself and check out our etsy lsreptiles.etsy.com so without further ado let's build that background before
Building The Background
we did anything we made sure to wipe everything down with alcohol let's make sure everything sticks we built this entire background using the josh's frogs background kit first thing we're going to do is lay out all the pieces beforehand i drew a picture of the general idea of where i wanted everything to be at i attempted to design this in a way so that the root system of the small tree would actually wrap around the log hide since this is going to be a 3d background these objects will actually be built into the background so the josh's frog kit that we purchased came with two of these great stuff foam cams and we used all of it when we were designing the back this stuff does expand so be cautious when using it i made sure to also get quite a bit of this foam behind the driftwood so that everything would stay in place many people when using this kit actually use it on the sides as well but since this was our first time we just wanted to do the back once you get all the foam laid down you need to allow for a couple days of drying time before you can start cutting everything away here i just used a razor blade to cut away the excess foam to get it to the ideal shape and then it was my turn the first thing i did was took a shop back and vacuumed this thing out really really good i didn't want any of the loose particles of the styrofoam to find its way into the silicone and just make it all look lumpy and weird or for debris to be falling off while i was trying to spread silicone so it is super important to just make sure that you get all of that off and you can also see that i'm scraping at the top great i definitely should have used painters tape or something to block that off because foam did accidentally get up in that grate and it doesn't come off so just a word of caution and then once all that was cleaned up and i verified that this was the shapes the nooks and crannies that i wanted it to be i could start siliconing it big advice here definitely make sure that you use gloves for this silicone is the worst thing to have all over your skin this project involves you touching silicone and smearing it all around so definitely make sure you have those gloves on our particular kit came with two tubes of this aquarium safe black silicone which was plenty to do this project and then i have my own caulk gun for this the kit does not come with one of these you will need one of these if you're gonna do this these are also my gloves so make sure that you pick both of those things up if you're planning to do this project called guns are super inexpensive they're only a few dollars at any hardware store the kit also came with coco cradle this is going to be used to press into the wet silicone to give it that naturalistic look i highly suggest using one hand to do the smearing of the silicone and your other hand to press the cocoa fiber into the silicone or else you're going to have a giant sticky mess this part does take a very long time it is important that you apply the silicone in pretty small sections and you make sure that when you are smearing this around you are getting all of the pieces of the foam because we want this foam to be sealed in and completely waterproof you want to make sure that the area that you are siliconing stays wet when you are pressing the cocoa cradle into it and you need to make sure that the cocoa cradle is completely dry this is going to ensure that it sticks the best and it all stays in place or else you're gonna have a situation where cover cradle is just falling off of the background and we definitely don't want that i just poured with my hand some of the cradle over the silicone and then just gently pressed it in don't press too hard or else you will have silicone smearing out of the areas that you pressed and then as i go i'm just tilting the entire enclosure up on its side just to ensure that i'm not missing any spots that way i can shake off all the excess and i can see exactly what i'm doing [Music] because of the sheer amount of silicone that you are using this project needs a very long time to dry it took over a week maybe going on two weeks just for all of the smell of silicone to not be present in the tank and you need to make sure that there is no smell of silicone present in the tank before you put animals in there again this entire project takes a very long time so if you are going to do something like this please plan accordingly just know that you are not going to be able to put your animal in this tank for a couple of weeks and this is it this is the finished product we are super super super happy with it this is the first time we had ever done a background like this and we think that it definitely made the entire tank look more naturalistic [Music]
Outro
and that's it we well i mean i really like how it turned out i don't know about her we're definitely gonna be doing more of that in the future i think i mean now we're starting to look at other tanks and now they just look bare in comparison remodel this project did take a lot of time like i mentioned earlier it took several weeks to let everything dry and air out and all of those things took a lot of time so if this is something that you are looking into make sure that you have ample time before you are putting your animal into that tank but i had a lot of fun doing this and we will be doing another one of these maybe even bigger very soon and if you like this video don't forget to like this video subscribe and ring that little bell for notifications thank you guys so much for watching and i hope you have a fantastic day
Bloopers
bye good morning welcome and welcome backh white to the reptilian den of time so if this is actually maybe that should go at the end that should go the end okay i thought we were at the end no this was the beginning all right so uh uh i had this whole thing in my head and now it's just gone l's reptiles l'sreptilesetsy.com but i had a lot of fun doing this and but i had a lot of fun doing this and we will be i was doing something weird let's just fix it real quick i don't know what but the camera's just throwing me off yeah this is where you usually say if you like this video and if you like this video and if you like this video for notifications
