20L Stream Terrarium

[markcorpus]

Great job!

 

[axolotlfreak56]

I love the tank. I tried an idea similar to this about a year ago only for it to end in disaster. If could ask, what brand of paint did you use and what brand of cement did you use? The problem that I had, even though I let every cure when I tried to cycle the tank, the paint would still bleed. Can't seem to figure out what I had been doing wrong to this day.

 

[olmrudyk]

I think that will definitely be my plan if the pH is an issue. I'm not in too much of a hurry and am willing to experiment a bit because my small salamanders still seem perfectly happy in a 10 gallon (though the Ocoee is getting big amazingly quickly), so I will probably at least give the cement a try.

Right now I am in the midst of coating most of the stream in black silicone anyways because of a handful of small leaks that I cannot seem to find on the top side of the stream. I thought my foam layer under the concrete was fairly seamless after all the silicone I used, but it turns out that I must have missed a few cracks. The drips that emerge are fairly slow, but I think coating the stream with silicone now and then covering it in another layer of cement should make it mostly waterproof.

My friend, who was a manager of big Aquarium Department of State Zoo in Kharkiv City, Ukraine( that's several dozens of huge tanks in exposition) for 10 years, said that using of silicate( not silicone!) glue resulted neutral pH in old type of their aquariums with 3 walls of regular cement, covered by a layer made from such a cement and contained near 1 tonn of water.
Only what I'm not sure in is the translation Russian "силикатный клей" to English; it should be "silicate glue". May be it makes sense to try?