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Unboxing & Setting Up 6 Terrariums

By Solid Gold Aquatics on

Jenny: Hey, guys. It's Jenny. Welcome back once again to Solid Gold.Today is a super exciting day because, as you can see behind me there, I have a delivery. You guys, Custom Aquariums has come through again, and my rack of, not one, not two, not even three, but six terrariums is here. It's raining. It actually just started raining, which is really going to throw a wrench into this process, but it is what it is. [laughs]

We're going to get these terrariums and the racking system for them, unloaded off of the delivery truck, and moved into my fish room, and I'm going to start setting them up.

One of the creates has already been brought up to my front door and now is the fun part. I have to open up at least one of the side panels, probably the top panel as well, maybe two of the side panels. Make sure nothing got damaged during shipping, and then start unloading them.

I just got done taking off one of the sides. I'm doing my best to shield my camera from the rain, by the way, if you're wondering. Check it out. You can see the stand in there. The stand is 66 inches long, and then a couple or a few of the tanks. So exciting. I barely even care that I'm getting poured on.

All right. I opened up every create, and there is no shipping damage. All of the glass tanks looks perfectly intact, which is so good to see. Custom Aquariums just does the most epic job packing these things. Even the delivery driver was like, "Wow, this is the best packing I've ever seen". He was impressed. I'm impressed. You can see the tanks here, inside of the creates.

These are going to be the taller tanks that are going to be on the third row. They're all glass. They're drilled in the back for the drainage. Oh, my gosh. This is crazy exciting, you guys. Here is the middle two tanks. These ones are going to be in the middle row. Then in here, we've got the bottom two tanks for my leopard geckos. So awesome. All right, I'm going to finish getting these all uncreated and start carrying them out to the fish room.

I just brought the first cage up to my fish room, and this is an identical one to the one that I just brought out. There is going to be two of these, side by side, each to house one leopard gecko each. These things are way bigger than what Sylvia is living in now. She is my leopard gecko for those of you who don't know. She is going to love it. There is so much more space.

It has sliding glass doors in the front. Actually, both sides can slide, and they open up all the way from the top to the bottom. Instead of having like a partially opening front door, the whole front can open. This type of cage here is known as the age three system, from Custom Aquariums, or their sister company, Custom Cages. They literally can make this custom to any dimensions, any materials. As you can see, the top here is perforated aluminum, so that lightning can still go through the top. The sides are glass. I can see into her cage from all angles. That's enough talking for now. I got to keep on unloading all these cages into my fish room.

All right. I'm starting to lose a little daylight here. It's going to be dark pretty soon. I've already gotten all the contents of this entire crate completely unloaded and carted back to the fish room all by myself, guys. My boyfriend, Chris, would be here helping me, but he actually had to work late today, because he is super slammed at work. I've just decided not to wait for him because I'm going to bring back whatever I can, and then, anything I need help with, I will just wait for him. Maybe I can get these all down there by my self. We will see.

Look at all those empty pallets. I did it all by myself. It's a bit crowded now in the fish room, though. Basically, all I could really do was just stack all the pieces in here, just randomly, wherever they would go. It's a bit of a mess. That's actually all I'm going to do for today. It's now just a little bit past 9:00 PM. It took me three hours to get everything completely uncrated, and moved into here, into the fish room. This weekend, I will come back out here and tackle, setting everything up, and putting it together the way it's supposed to go. For now, I just need to be done. [laughs]

Automated Voice: Day Two.

Automated Voice: Day three.

Jenny: Now that I have the terrariums rack fully assembled. It's time to start setting up some of the tanks on it. Before I can even do that, I have to set up the automated misting system. Now, MistKing was nice enough to send me their ultimate misting system package, so I can set it up on all four of the top tanks. When I set up my first bioactive dark pro vivarium a few years ago, I purchased a MistKing automatic misting system, because it really is the standard in automated misting systems for that dark pro vivariums.

Of course, that's what I chose back then. I loved it. It worked really well. It's super programmable. You can customize it to come on for a certain number of seconds or a certain number of times each day. It can be different for each day of the week too. It's just awesome, and hence why I'm so excited about setting it up. Here is the box that the misting system came in, and all the parts laid out. We got the pump here, the seconds timer here. Inside these bags are all the different pieces like the misting nozzles.

They also sent me this adorable, little fridge magnet. Of course, that immediately had to go on the fish room fridge. The best part of all, and I am not a fidget spinner person. I've never had one before. I've barely even held one. This is the fidget spinner that they sent. It's an LED fidget spinner. Watch this, okay? Watch this. It's kind of showing up. It's like flashing, but in person, it doesn't flash. It stays on there.

This is going to be misting reservoir.This is where the water is going to be pulled from the pump to mist all the tanks. I will just have to manually top this off when it's getting low. We have attached the included bulkhead here at the bottom. On this side of the bulkhead, we're attaching some of the misting tubings. That's going to go to the pump, which is then going to pump the water up to the tanks.

This is like the tiniest bulb I've ever seen. It's so cute. This is my diagram of unit five, which is the six terrariums. Marty from MistKing was awesome enough to kind of make me a little diagram of how I will need to set it up for this system.

Automated Voice: Eventually.

Jenny: All right, guys. Chris and I have been working like crazy this past two weeks to get the terrariums rack and Custom Aquarium/Custom Cages all set up and put together. I know what you're thinking. "Jenny, it still doesn't look like much. What the heck is going on? What have you been doing with all of your time?" [laughs] My plan for this rack of terrariums is to have six different terrariums for four different species of reptiles and amphibians to each live in there. Every terrarium is going to be set up really nicely, like a display terrarium or a display vivarium, whatever you want to call it.

Before any of that can happen, I have to put the horse before the cart in this situation. Which is why I went to get the misting system, and I have been setting that all up to the T here on my rack system. I want to make sure that I'm doing everything right the first time, so I don't have to go back and fix things or redo things after the fact. I know that I probably still will have to do that here and there, and I'm okay with that. I just want to get things mostly done right to the best of my ability, anyway, before I actually start putting the tanks on the racks, and animal inhabitants in them.

Here is what the terrariums rack looks like right now. It's sometimes hard to tell the scale of things on video. The terrariums unit here is 66 inches long, it's 24 inches deep from front to back, and it is this tall. [laughs] Yes, it's pretty tall. There is the cabinet underneath the entire unit. Then, the first level, there is already actually one leopard gecko tank in place there, just temporarily. Then, there is a section in between, with sliding doors, which I will show you guys in a second. Then there's the section in the middle there for two dart frog tanks, so they're going to go side by side. Again another spacer section with sliding doors for access to the top of those tanks, and then the top shelf right there is going to be for the two taller tanks and those are going to be for species of animals that I haven't 100% decided on yet/I don't really know if I want to announce it quite yet.

Let me show you guys from the bottom up. This is the bottom of the cabinet. Custom Aquariums makes these really cool sliding door panels where all you have to do is kind of just slide it over and you have a lot of access to that side. If you need to see the other side you can slide both of them over to the other side so you can access that. They even come off of the track really really easily and I've already done this several times already when setting everything up under here because I needed more working space. I would just get frustrated and then just, all you have to do is pop these off and see how easy that came off and then you just take the other one off as well and now you have access to the entire thing completely unobstructed.

Underneath the cabinet here is where I have all of the water management systems and all of the buckets and other reservoirs to hold water that's going into the tanks and also wastewater that has come out of the tanks. This bin right in the middle is going to be my reservoir of fresh water. I'm going to be filling this up probably with something like a Python hose that attaches right to the sink, fill it up and put dechlorinator in there, and then this is going to feed dechlorinated fresh water to the vivariums via the mist king pump. This is just a 14-gallon big storage container that I found at the hardware store. I purposefully went and looked for one that was really short, but still held a good amount of water. I could have used a five gallon like that but that would be five gallons as opposed to 14 gallons and obviously more is better, if I'm hoping with this system is going to be self-sustaining for a good period of time before I have to top off the water in that.

There you can see the little black line that's coming out of the good water reservoir it goes to a ball valve then it connects to this little gadget right there, which is called a zip drip. That helps-- I don't know exactly the physics of how it works but I'm sure you can find it on the Mist King website or you can let me know in the comments below because I'm sure some of you watching this will know, but that helps prevent dripping in your misting lines. Once the misting stops sometimes there will be like drips that keep happening even though it's not misting. Then here is the Mist King pump, you see the black tubing going into that and then feeding out the other side. Then it goes up this hole that's drilled into the back of the cabinet.

Then coming around to the side and the back of this terrarium unit here you can see that the black hose is coming up the side of it, and by the way all of this meticulous cord management what's going on here-- cord and hose management is courtesy of Chris so thank you, Chris, for all your help it looks really good. The water comes up here from the Mist King pump and then it tees off and this part loops around to the back of the unit and it comes through a hole that we drilled right back there, we even put like a little black grommet in there so it looks nice and then so far this is currently unfinished. But when all is said and done this hose is actually going to be mounted up above the lids of all of these terrariums, and then there's going to be tees coming off of it and then from those tees each tank is going to get two of these double misting nozzles from Mist King.

This is one of the dart frog tanks over here that's currently in progress, so I'll give you guys a little sneak peek of that but I'll be doing a video showing how I set the entire thing up in the future when it's a little bit closer to completion. But I just popped this misting nozzle on here really quick. It's not properly installed on here right now you can see it's loose and spinning around, but I just popped it on here really quick so you guys can see what I mean when I say these are going to be installed on the lids so that's what that's going to look like. From the front of it you'll see them hanging down a little bit but when all the wood and plants is in here you really won't notice it too much. It tees off there but then it also continues to go up and then it tees off again up here, and again it goes in a hole drilled in the upper part of this rack, and then again we have a loose length of hose sticking down that's going to have nozzles going into each of the tanks up here.

The reason there's a T up there and not just like a 90-degree elbow or something is because the hose has to come all the way back down and then tie back into the zip drip again for it to work properly. That's the water going into the system but what about the water coming out of the system? That's what these holes that are drilled here in the backs of the terrarium rack are for. These are drilled in approximately the same location that the drain holes are drilled on the actual amphibious tanks themselves. I keep calling them terrariums or vivariums but technically you guys if you were looking for these on Custom Aquariums website, they are the amphibious tanks. They're really cool because they hold water on the bottom like an aquarium but on the top they have these big sliding doors and they can be any size that you want they make these custom obviously, Custom Aquariums. They make these in amphibious tanks custom to any size that you could possibly need.

I have two different sizes of them already. This is the tall one from the top, and then this is the medium one for the middle. I'm also getting an even taller one that's going to go on a third rack next to these guys over here. They make all sorts of different sizes and configurations of these it's really pretty awesome. But anyways they also drilled these tanks for me for water drainage by request, so they're drilled right there in the back and they supplied me with all the fittings, the bulkheads and then these little-barbed fittings that I would need and all the hose too. That's where the water is going to drain out of all of these tanks, and as you can see there's going to be more about this in future videos, but I have created a false bottom on this tank so that way the water will be able to sit in here and keep the humidity level high which is where the dart frogs like it. But the soil and thus the plant roots won't be bogged down by sitting in water-saturated soil because there's going to be this false bottom elevating that and then the dirt layer on top of that. So anyways that's how the drainage on these vivariums is going to work.

Oh hi Marshmallow, hi Nalu, hi Melina. Everyone always thinks that Marshmallow is sick because he looks like he has dropsy but you guys he's just a pearl scale goldfish he's supposed to look like that, and he's adorable, okay, leave him alone.

The tank is going to scoop back onto the shelf here and that barbed fitting is going to tie into this green hose right here, and that is fed down behind the rack of terrariums and feeds into the bucket down here. This one right here is a five-gallon bucket for wastewater. I chose one that's slightly clear so I can shine a light in it and easily see how full it is because these ones are going to have to be emptied by me manually. I obviously want to be able to see in there easily. I've set this bucket up so that two of the vivariums are going to be draining into this bucket with their waste water, and then the other two vivariums are going to be draining their wastewater into this bucket over here.

I also put lights in here as you can see if I kind of give you guys an underneath view here of this or also if I go ahead and open up this spacer piece of the cabinet, you can see my little rows of LED lights and I'm still not sure if this is going to be enough light output for growing plants in my vivariums. I'm going to try it out and see, but I might actually double this amount of light for the dart frog tanks. The lumen rating on these lights is not that great. The lumens means the output of light or basically how bright or how strong the light is. It's not very great on these lights because these are actually meant as under cabinet lights for like kitchen cabinets and stuff. If you guys are interested in these lights I'll put a link to where I got them on Amazon in the description section down below. Links to all this stuff anything applicable that's mentioned in this video will be in the description section down below so I hope that's helpful to you guys.

I think they're good lights, the Kelvin rating is 6500 K so that is very good. That means it's the color temperature of the light basically. The Kelvin rating of natural daylight is somewhere between 5,000 K and I think 7,500 K so 6500 K is really the sweet spot to aim for when you're talking about lighting for your vivarium plants to help them grow their best. I also do have a couple of little grow lights and this is just something I'm experimenting with. I don't think it's at all necessary, but I just want to try it out and see if it works well. Chris even rigs up the little controller for them so that it's hanging right here in reach. The grow light has a timer function right on it so I didn't have to get a separate timer for that, it's just built right in, but I do have a timer for the daytime lights which I actually haven't installed up there yet but I do have it installed down here. You can see there the lights are plugged into that timer and I'm probably going to have it on for 12 hours a day.

Something I thought was cool about these lights too is they come with a little remote which I've already labeled Leo's and dart frogs because they look identical, but you can turn it on and off from this remote. You can also increase or decrease the brightness with these controls here, or there's also like quick buttons where you can just do 50% or 25%. which especially for the leopard geckos is going to be really nice because they don't really like super bright lights. Also, you guys are getting a sneak peek of one of the leopard gecko tanks which I've installed the background for that too. Awesome. I'm so excited this one is going to be for little Roon who is doing awesomely by the way.

Each level of this rack also has its own power strip its mounted right to the rack here so it's not going anywhere and this is really nice because I'm going to have a lot of different electrical things that have to plug in whether it's under tank heaters, UV lamps, lights of all various sorts and maybe even fans to help circulate air around inside of some of these vivariums. Each one has it, that's for the middle one and then you can see the power strip for the bottom one there and the power strip for the top one is actually mounted on the outside way up top.

There's a look into what I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes I know it seems like there's not much going on behind the scenes with me and Solid Gold but honestly, guys, always so much more going on than I really share and that's my fault. I really need to get better at sharing things as they're happening with you guys and I've been trying to do that on Instagram and Facebook. It's a really good way for me to just quickly push something out, some updates out to you guys throughout the week in between video updates. [laughs] Chris is out there playing with a couple of his dogs. Brutus is playing. Brutus has been sick, you guys, there's more info about that on my Instagram and Chris's Instagram as well but Brutus is finally getting better. He had a little health scare, actually a pretty big health scare for a minute there but he looks better today so we're happy about that. Here Brutus, here.

Have you ever seen so many terrarium supplies and terrariums and aquariums all in one spot? We've got a vivarium in progress here. Tons of the vivarium supplies here. A whole bunch of live oak and Magnolia leaves that I collected from my yard that I have to boil so I can use them in my vivariums, more false bottoms that are being worked on. Some more vivarium and terrarium supplies. Look, some live plants for the vivariums. Another false bottom. It really just goes on and on for days. Thanks for watching guys, and thank you so much for sticking with me on this. I know it's been a long time in the works but like I said and like I've been saying since the beginning I really just don't want to rush this process. First of all, I want to enjoy it because I mean honestly I'm so incredibly lucky to be able to do all this stuff.

I don't want to do it if I'm not enjoying it you know what I mean and I also don't want to do it if I'm not sharing it with you guys so it's always this internal struggle of like, "I could get so much work done if I just didn't have to film everything." That's the whole point. The whole point is filming it. The fact that I have to do it and also film it makes it take a little bit longer. I also have to wait on a lot of these parts that are being sent to me because all of this stuff is completely custom it's not just stuff you can- well, some of it is stuff you can buy off the shelf like the terrarium racks and the aquarium racks and the backgrounds that are going to fit in there perfectly. All this stuff is custom and so it takes time to be made and shipped to me.

Also, this is a lot that I'm taking on and I love it but it is going to take time. I want to make sure that I'm doing it slowly and doing it right the first time so I don't have to go back and redo things. I'm enjoying the process. I really hope you guys are too. I'm sorry you haven't seen much of my goldfish or any of my other fish for that matter recently but I do plan on changing that. My goldfish are doing awesomely. Little Denzel in his quarantine tank is ready to move in with the other goldfish any day now and the Joaquins in the quarantine are doing great too. Everyone's doing great. I'm so happy about that.

I will be making more content about my fish in the coming weeks so definitely stay tuned for that. I hope you guys just like me enjoy animals of all kinds because I really do. Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. I can't wait. I seriously can't wait to continue the progress on these vivariums and keep sharing them with you guys so stay tuned for next time and until then stay gold.

Chris: Buddy get it. One, two good boy.

Jenny: Come on Brutus.

Chris: Brutus is faster than you Leia. .Come on bud, good boy. All right that's enough exercise for you buddy.

About Solid Gold Aquatics

Jennie’s fish house is outfitted with Custom Aquariums rack systems that include standard glass aquariums for her fish collection, amphibious tanks set up a bioactive vivariums, and Custom Cages Hybrid H2 reptile enclosures.

"I'm Jennifer Lynx and Solid Gold is about goldfish and all the other pets in my life - aquatic or not! Fancy goldfish have long been the main subject of my channel, but as an animal lover I have many other pets that I make videos about too. Here you'll find goldfish, discus, plecos, other aquarium fish, axolotls, poison dart frogs, leopard geckos, rabbits, cats, and more. Subscribe to see new videos about them every week!"

Jennie's mission is about promoting the goldfish hobby and inspiring better goldfish-keeping practices.

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