Transcript
Intro
you are the cutest cutest pop i done good morning reptilians welcome and welcome back to the channel i'm elle and this is elle's reptiles there are quite a lot of new people here so welcome to all of the new subscribers and thank you so much for taking time out of your day to subscribe to the channel this week we are doing a another tank build and i'm super excited about this this is the one that i've been kind of mentioning a lot in all of my previous videos for the last month because we have been working super hard on this tank and i'm excited about it for those of you who've been following my channel for a long time you know that i've been wanting to get sterling my mailball python into a vision cage for a very long time i've mentioned it a lot and finally we are doing that today and we are finally also setting him up completely bioactive this video is sponsored by vision products who sent me this awesome tank for sterling so thank you so so so much vision products for sending me this tank and also sending me my cape geckos tank a few months ago love their products so much definitely make sure to check them out their link will be in the description let's build sterling's tank for this build we are using the vision model 322
Tank Specs
it comes out to about 75 gallons it doesn't look a lot bigger than the one that he's currently in but he's currently in a 40 gallon breeder it is a whole lot deeper and taller than his previous tank was which i am super
Background
excited about all right so the first part of this was just building the background we will have an in-depth video on just how to build a background coming not this wednesday maybe next wednesday but we will go in depth but basically what we are using here is spray foam some wood pieces cork bark black silicone and cocoa fiber to build this background i also put planters into it because we want to actually plant plants directly into the background this time this is what the finished background looks like after letting this cure for several days i think it ended up being
Setup
about five or six days curing outside in open air after all the silicone smell was completely gone we were able to actually bring the tank inside and start putting things in it first of all is the substrate barrier this is super helpful if you're going to put a pretty deep layer of substrate into the tank that way your substrate doesn't spill out [Music] next we're using this false bottom from josh's frogs it's basically just clay balls this is a drainage layer for the tank this just allows the air to make it through the soil and it also allows the roots not to be sitting in wet soil all the time and get root rot [Music] then we are putting the drainage barrier down this just keeps the soil separate from the drainage layer this is again the josh's frog's brand of this but you can also use a mesh green that you can find at walmart instead then we have the actual substrate for this as a base layer i am using abg mix again from josh's frogs most of the stuff came from josh's frogs but abg makes i have found to be really good at growing plants and it's also very soft if you see all that moss that's in there it just provides a wonderful base for growing plants along with some scots topsoil this is a topsoil that doesn't have any kind of pesticides or manures fertilizers anything like that in it fantastic for giving the plant somewhere to grab onto and some cocoa fiber just to add substance to this mixture this whole mixture does a very good job holding in humidity which if you guys know sterling you know that he needs all the help he can get holding in humidity next up we were adding plants some of these came from josh's frogs like the spider plant there in the front and the zz plant some came from my local nursery like the philodendron that is everywhere and we are also adding the super cool trellis i'm actually really excited about this i used the other half of this in my nose bioactive tank and i thought it'd make a really cool hide for him you may look at it and think that oh that's see-through we're gonna put some plants on in a minute but sterling is blind so he can't see if he can see through it he just knows that he feels secure for the longest time his favorite hide was a see-through guinea pig house so this having holes in it doesn't really matter to him as long as it feels snug and secure we are holding that in place with fishing line that i actually strung through the mesh screen at the top and just kind of putting some stuff in front of it to make it look a little more closed in like plants and wood ignore the fact that this whole tank is wobbling it was on a table so that i could record it properly next up is the cleanup crew we are adding springtails like always this is a humid environment so springtails are going to be fantastic in here and i am also adding some isopods these are porcelain orange i think isopods that are going into this tank from my isopod colony next up we are adding leaf litter and sphagnum moss a leaf litter of course is for the iso pods to eat they eat mostly dead vegetation and the sphagnum moss is for the isopods to hide under but also to hold in the humidity of the tank [Music]
Lights
as for lighting on this tank we are using these led grow lights this is my third set of these that i have ordered i love them so much they do such a good job growing my plants and they have this really cool clamp thing on them so that i can just clamp them to my shelving system and not have to take up additional space the little wiry bendy part of them also is super cool for not paying off additional space and for heat we are going to use the arcadia deep heat projector with a dimmable dome i've never used one of these before but i was super super super excited to try it especially because we can't really put a heat pad on this tank because of the thick substrate but this thing is awesome i love it so much sterling loves it he has been on top of his hide basking inside of his height it heats up all the way through his hide it's fantastic this is on the other side what that high looks like i did go back and add some plants in there just to make it a little more enclosed but he also has like a shelf system on top of this piece of wood and he loves it i thought that he was going to be hiding in here at this cold hide but he's just been sleeping up here on the shelf and it's so cool he loves climbing in this tank his water bowl is a bit smaller than it previously was just because it was taking up a lot of space and he's never once soaked in it in the year two years that it's been in there he drinks at it all the time which is fine because this tank is gonna hold a whole lot more humidity than his last one did the last thing to do was just to add the doors these are actually tempered glass doors and then you add the handles onto that which just sticks on with 3m tape [Music] and then i'm just adding one of his vines from his old tank into that back corner just so he feels a little more secure and also that way his scent is on things the hide in this tank is also his old hide and that stump thing in the front side is also from his old tank so i just wanted to keep some of his scents in the tank also i promise that that water bowl is not dirty it's just super old and so that's just what it looks like after being used for years and years and years but after that i'm just giving the tank one very good spray down before adding him
Sterling in his new tank
in he thoroughly enjoyed exploring this tank he spent so many hours exploring he just now as i am recording this voiceover after recording this the same day he is just now asleep on top of his log because he explored the whole day and it made me super happy he is an adult male he will not get any bigger than this this is his full-grown size and i overestimated the size of the tank and so i would like to get him into a bigger tank eventually but this tank is so lovely it makes me so happy i've been wanting to do a bioactive for a long time now and the humidity is going to be held so much better because he always has a problem shedding i am beyond happy with how all of this turned out and with how happy he seems to be with his tank [Music] so [Music]
Outro
but that is it i'm so happy this tank came out really good i am loving how natural it looks it looks so much more natural than all of his other hides again if you've been here for a while you know that he's had everything from guinea pig hides to i don't know there's just been a lot of random things but i am finally so happy with his tank and he likes to get out a lot so it's nice that i can just reach in from the front and grab him out i'm
Sponsor - Vision Products
so happy thank you again so much to vision products for sponsoring this video sending me that tank thank you awesome company to work with they are super accommodating super friendly highly recommend this company if you want a vision tank for your animal but
Shoutouts
that's all as always if you have not already please feel free to follow me on other socials and like subscribe and hit that bell for notifications every single time i have a new video to every sunday and some wednesdays this week's instagram shout out is for jean seven two six four four minutes here i'm going through and liking a whole bunch of my stuff and this week's subscriber shout out is for darth revan for commenting on last week's video if you have not seen last week's video it was a giant collab with so many reptile youtubers and it was so much fun make sure to check that video out if you haven't and i also have an entire playlist of everyone who was there their videos on that event in my playlist tab on my channel thank you guys both so much for the support you are the bee's knees thank you so much for watching and i hope you have a fantastic day bye [Music]
