Mist Dripwall Betta Paludarium

Yo what's going on SerpaSquad, Tanner here and I'm back with another beta build. A while back I made an awesome aquascape for my wife's betta Ellie. She loved that tank until around a month ago. Unfortunately Ellie decided to jump out of the tank and passed away. It was a sad experience that I shared in a previous video. I dismantled that tank and moved the other fish into their own dedicated blackwater aquascape to help her move on. I knew I had to her another betta, but I wanted to give it a few months. However, while I was at Aquashell of Chicago I saw a beautiful one with a huge personality. I knew she was the one. My wife fell in love with her immediately and named her Mia. Here's how I made an awesome paludarium style setup for her. The journey began with this cube aquarium I got from my friends over at Flip Aquatics. For the scape itself I have various pieces of Malaysian driftwood. They all look different but as they season in the tank they'll become uniform. This piece here was the inspiration for the entire build. It has a very unique shape that will work great as a drift wall. I'll also use it as my key element. I like the look of this but I wanted it to go above the rim. I raised it up with a few pieces of foam. I continued scaping on the left side. As I did I tried to frame in or mimic the piece on the back. I'll use super glue gel and cotton balls to combine the pieces together. I pulled off a small section of cotton and did a dry fit. The fit looked good so I went on to saturate the cotton with glue. This creates an exothermic reaction that causes the glue to dry much faster. So in some instances it makes sense to do it like this. I placed it back into the tank. Just a friendly reminder to like and subscribe we're getting pretty close to a million. I did a dry fit for the third piece to visualize how the finalized scape will look. Prior to adding it though I'll secure the first pieces to the glass with expanding foam. Sure I could have done it without foam but this is an easy way to keep the wood from falling over. I let the foam cure for about 20 minutes. Then I went back and removed some of the excess by hand. I scraped some off the glass as well. Here's how it looks now. At this point I was able to remove the risers but I still want something under the wood for support. Originally I chose elephant skinstone but I'll swap it out later. For now I worked in the piece of wood from before. I placed it in a way that mimics the curvature of the piece in the middle while also creating an overhang for plants on the right. I locked it in place with foam like before. At this point I decided to swap out the stones. I went with a few pieces of pagoda stone instead. I only needed a few for support under the wood so they won't be a prominent part of the aesthetic at the end. It probably wasn't necessary but I foamed in this area as well. Let's get the mechanics addressed. To keep the water moving I'll use a Sicce Synchronano pump. I situated it near the back right behind the driftwood. I fed the tube up the back and through the opening in the wood. I checked the length and cut off the excess. I also put a barbed tee on the output to split the water flow. Time for a water test. It looked good but a little too drippy. I adjusted things accordingly. Back to the scape. I'll use small scrap branches of spiderwood to add texture. I resorted to the super glue again to secure them to the top of the scape. I think the gnarly look of roots or something like that will really complement the rest of the scape. I added a larger piece of spiderwood near the back to accentuate these details and give the illusion they're all connected together. Back to the sections around the pump. I want to partition it off so the pump doesn't get clogged with substrate. I started with a piece of metalimac. I put it between the glass and hard scape to section it off. I placed fine filter foam in front of that. I filled in the smallest cracks with polyester fluff. This worked well on the right side but I needed something different on the left. I'll make a cage of sorts to keep it isolated from everything else. For that I'll use zip ties, geotextile fabric, and a net pot. I wrapped the fabric around the pot and secured it with zip ties. I nestled it around the pump. Doing it this way will make it easy to access the pump without ruining the scape. I used damp sphagnum moss as the substrate for the terrestrial riparian plants. I placed it throughout cracks and crevices all along the top of the scape. I also used it to hide some of the exposed foam. As for the plants, I'll start with several cryptanthus nubicola. These will do well in this environment and I think they complement the scape. I'll also use java moss to conceal the sphagnum moss. As it establishes, it will cover a lot of the hard scape as well. For the substrate in the aquatic portion of the tank, I'll start with the base layer of aquasolum. I don't need much of this as I'm not sure how many aquatic plants I'll even include. I pushed it all near the back of the tank. Then I filled in the front and concealed most of aquasoil with natural colored sand. I sprinkled in gravel for more texture. I also attached a small piece of window frost film to the back. I only covered this portion because the rest is hidden by the hard scape. Then I moved the tank to its spot on the shelf on top of neoprene which acts as a self-leveling mat. A really cool feature that will set this tank apart is an atomizer. I got this from my friends over at UNS. I saw one being used in one of their display tanks and I really like the quality of the build. A feature I like about it is that it has a plate on top that stops water from splashing everywhere. Anyway, I installed it in the back of the tank where it's hidden from view. I filled up the tank once more so I could add the remaining plants. I wedged an alternanthera dentata in the back right which added more texture and further hid the atomizer. I also added ficus pumila corsifolia around the top for even more texture. I placed java fern windelove in a few areas in the hard scape. I also planted cryptocoryne wenti bronze in the substrate. These melted away but they'll grow back in a few weeks. Both of the aquatic plants also came from Flip Aquatics. During that process I stirred up some aquasoil. Rather than sift it out of the sand, I decided to mix in fine gravel to make it blend in. It turned out looking better after that anyway. No betta tank is complete without botanicals, right? I added a mix of various leaves and a few seed pods to the bottom of the tank. They look cool but are also really beneficial. They'll release humic acids and tannins which lower the pH and overall just make the tank a more suitable environment. A setup like this also demands floating plants. I went with salvinia minima and duckweed. Now we can add Mia to the tank. She'll be the only inhabitant. It turns out that Mia is a spicy one and won't tolerate tank mates. We tried to house other fish with her in quarantine but she wasn't having it. We quickly removed them and she immediately chilled out. That's the thing, all bettas are totally different. Here it is, the new betta paludarium. I had a lot of fun making it and I think it's a great way to keep and showcase a beautiful betta such as this. The tank itself holds roughly eight and a half gallons which is a great footprint for a single betta. I also dropped the water line way below the rim to avoid the previous incident. Many of you often ask about the efficiency of filtration with a setup like this and how the terrestrial plants fare long term. Biological filtration happens everywhere in the tank, in the substrate, on the driftwood, etc. As for mechanical filtration, that's where the moss comes in. The water is pumped up through the moss which will collect the fine particles. Nutrient export will occur during water changes and through the plants, especially what's growing above the rim. If the plants are selected properly, they will thrive long term in a setup like this. It takes some experimentation and know-how to get it right, but it's a great option if you can get it figured out. Maybe I should do an extensive video on that to demystify the process. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in down in the comments. Anyway, that's all for now. Let me know what you think of the project and leave me a thumbs up if you stuck around this long. As always, I hope you all enjoyed the video and learned something new. Until next time, SerpaSquad, take care and peace!