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HUGE DRIFTWOOD For the 350 Gallon Paludarium

By SerpaDesign on

Tanner: What's going on, Serpa squad? Tanner here. I know things are a little bit crazy right now, but I hope things are going well for you. If they're not, I hope they get better, but like me you're probably sick and tired of hearing about all that stuff, but I'm still down here working in the animal room and I got a lot of stuff to update you on. Why don't we go ahead and take a look? Here's how the animal room currently looks. It's looking pretty good, but as I've shown and explained in recent videos, everything's being changed. Old setups are coming down, new ones are coming up, a lot of things are just being adjusted right now.

This seems like the perfect time to do a lot of that, so for me to better show what I'm about to explain, let me pull up a little diagram. Doing something like this makes moving objects much easier because I can do it on screen first, figure out just exactly where I want to put them, and then move them in person so I don't have to double down on the work, which is something you do not want to do when you're moving around all these heavy tanks.

Anyway, let's put all the current pieces in place. As you can see, we have all of the main items here. However, most of this will change except for the nano shelf, the 16-gallon rack, the 350-gallon paludarium, the 40-gallon rack, the plywood vivariums, and the terrarium shelves. While we're talking about the terrarium shelves, let me show you a few adjustments I made the other day. As most of you know, I made that skyscraper paludarium the other week, but I didn't have anywhere to put it, so I took one of the terrarium shelves out in the garage and made a few adjustments.

If you remember, both of these originally had a shelf that went the full length of them. As I started working on projects and doing different things like that, I just found that this wasn't a very practical design. So, what I did was removed that full-length shelf, adjust things, and built another one. After that, of course, I stained and polyed the piece to make it look like this is how I originally built it. After that, I brought the new shelf into the room and I swapped it with the one that's currently there.

To do that, I had to take all the terrariums off the shelves, drain the tanks, and slide it on over. On the new shelf, I put Casper's black water tank and the new paludarium. Let's not forget about all the terrariums. Down to Casper's aquarium real quick, since I was just talking about it, and I feel like I haven't shown it in quite a while, as you can see, it's doing really well.

All the plants have grown in quite a bit since whenever I last showed it, and he's definitely his old spunky self. He swims all over the place, comes up to greet you, join his tank, and I love to see it. He's definitely probably one of my favorites in the room right now. He's just got a ton of personality and he looks way different from whenever you last saw him. Look at that finnage. I know whenever I first bought him, his fins were real small and I didn't really think that he'd have this kind of finnage to him, but over time, he just grew it and definitely a spectacle of a fish, to say the least.

Moving over to the new skyscraper paludarium real quick, I think it looks awesome on the shelf. I love the way that the wood showcases the tank as a picture frame, if you will, and just really makes things stand out. My initial plan was to stock this set up this week, but unfortunately, we have a little bit of molding on the wood. Typically when that occurs, I like to scrub it off and do frequent water changes to remove it. You can let it run its course, which usually takes about a week or two, and it's something that you'll very frequently see with spider wood, but I find that it unnecessarily sours the setup.

So I like to take it out because I don't want it to kill any of the plants. I figure there's no reason to rush and get the fish in here right away if I'm going to be doing all that maintenance work to it, so I'll let the fish sit in quarantine for a little bit longer, and then maybe next week or the week after, we could get the fish in there. Until then, I'll just let it keep doing its thing and then I'll do the necessary maintenance before that point.

Well, on that, I should also mention about the blue dream shrimp. Someone commented and it was something that I was thinking about, is that we should get the blue dream shrimp in this aquarium as well. I think it could be really cool, but I also thought to put them in that nano fish aquarium that I showed a few weeks back or perhaps even in another dedicated aquarium for them. I have some plans to do an iwagumi in the near future and I thought they could be perfect for it, but I don't know, what are your thoughts? Should I put them in here or should I put them in that other aquarium or in a different dedicated aquarium?

I just don't want to keep this one up any longer. I don't think this scape is very good. Although it is seasoned and they're doing well in it, I think that just for me, personally, I don't like this as a long-term aquarium. I'd rather put them in here, which I know for sure is going to be a long-term aquarium or that other one.

Let's go back to the room graphic real quick to show you how things are going to improve further. I'm going to build a new computer desk soon, which I'll show you guys in a future video, but it's going to be smaller and more compact, which will free up a ton of space to move the bookshelves in a different location. I'm not sure where I'll put the biOrb though, so I'll just put it on this wall momentarily. Doing all of that made some space to move the 150 cube over between the terrarium shelves.

I'm still not sure what I'll do with that tank after I get the fish into the 350, but I have a few ideas in mind that I think could be really cool. You know me. I moved the 150, now I got a blank canvas over on the wall where it was. I came up with this idea to do a 75-gallon rack. Luckily, I came up with that idea just as soon as the dollar per gallon sale is going on. As it stands, I got a lot of materials on hand, so I pretty much have everything I need to build the stand for this. I'm working on that now and if it's a project that you guys would like to see an extensive video on, let me know because it's going to be very similar to the 40-gallon rack.

Anyway, you may be wondering what am I going to do with those tanks, but I'll save that for a future video. While we're in the garage, I might as well give you a quick update on the 350. As you can see, I have one of the largest pieces of driftwood in there right now, which is an awesome piece. It has a lot of character and I'm going to use that one as my key element to dictate how everything else goes and that should also give you a brief idea as to what my plans are for this setup, but I have a bunch of other ones on the ground here, all of which have equally as much character, just different in their own sort of way.

I'm just trying to figure out how to fit all the pieces together because it's really just about all I can do with this setup right now. There's not much else I can do without having all the materials for the background. I need just a few more things, but I can't get them right now with the way that everything's going on. With any luck, maybe I'll have those in about two weeks, then we could get to make in the background and, realistically, hopefully, we could get this up in four to six weeks if everything goes according to plan.

Obviously, I got to get it moved into the room, but I could actually do pretty much everything I need to do for this setup before I get it into the room. It's just that I'll get the background on, get it in the room, and then I'll finalize all the hardscape and that sort of thing, so we're not going to actually move it with the driftwood in the tank, but that's how it goes. You can't always finish things how you expect to finish them or do things as quickly as you'd like, so I'm being patient with this one. With any luck, hopefully, we should have this up soon. I really can't wait to show you what I have planned for it because I think it's going to be something really special in the animal room.

I haven't done something quite like it yet and honestly, I don't really think there's anything else like it on YouTube yet, so really excited to share this one with you. As I said earlier in the video, the placement for the 350 is pretty much set in stone. I calculated it quite a bit and I feel like that's the best place to have it to really enjoy it and for it not to interrupt with any of the other setups. That's what it's going to stay, but everything on the left side of the room or my left as I'm looking at it, is going to change quite a bit. The gecko setup, that's going to go. The mini pond, I don't know where I'm going to put it, but I'll put it elsewhere and same with the biOrb.

As I said in our more recent video, Dean's current setup, that's going to go, the 125 that is. We're going to build him a new one, and on that, it's going to be a rack. I won't tell you about the other setups that are going to go on it, but it'll be four total, and then I have a little bit of a secret project that's going to go to the left of that, which is going to be a giant one and I'm really excited for that. That's pretty much I can do for this one. I know it wasn't the most exciting video in the world, but I hope you appreciate seeing some of the behind-the-scenes and what I have planned for this room.

I got a lot of awesome projects lined up that I cannot wait to share with you, so stay tuned for all of that. Many of you have commented about how this content's helping you get through this time period, you're binge-watching it, that sort of thing, and it's helping you find a place of peace. I really like to hear that and I posted about this the other day. I was curious, what would you guys think if I do some bonus content? Maybe I do an extra video each week while all of this stuff's going on to just help you guys out, help you find a place of peace even more. If that's something you'd be interested in, definitely let me know and let me know what kind of stuff you'd want to see.

I'm not going to do an additional project each week. I just can't do that with the way that I do the projects. It's better off to be one a week, but I would definitely be interested in getting some bonus content out there for you guys. I don't know what it would be. I have a couple of ideas, but I'll leave that up to you. Let me know what you want to see if that's something you want to see. Also, I appreciate all of you, you've shown concern towards me and my animals during this time period wondering how we're going to get through it and wondering how I'm going to keep them fed, all that stuff. It'll be alright. I stocked up accordingly, I got extra crickets, extra roaches, those will be fine.

I got plenty to last quite a long time. I got flakes, pellets for the fish, as well as a lot of frozen food. I got plenty of frozen rodents and just other things that I need for the animals, so all is well. I stocked up accordingly. Typically, I keep a lot of extra on hand anyway, so I didn't have to get that much more to sustain myself during this time period. Everybody in here, they're going to be all right, assuming this doesn't last for a super long period of time, but if it's just a couple of weeks or a couple of months, we're all right down here. One more thing, I also keep a lot of materials and plants and different things for my projects on hand, so there's gonna be no shortage of projects during this time.

Anyway, that's the last you're going to hear from me about any of this stuff. As always, I appreciate your continued support. I hope that all of you are doing well, and as always, take care, and peace.

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[00:10:02] [END OF AUDIO]

About SerpaDesign

"Hi I'm Tanner! I am an artist, designer, photographer, nature lover and DIY fanatic. My passion is to bring nature indoors and share my projects/ideas with others."

"The focus of my channel is to show how I use nature as an artistic medium. If you want to make a beautiful, long-lived terrarium or a bioactive vivarium, then this is the channel for you! I go in depth on every topic, teaching you exactly how and why I do what I do. I also push the boundary, in hopes to create some of the most unique projects you'll see on this side of YouTube."

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