DIY Mini RainFall Zen Terrarium

Yo, what's going on SerpaSquad? Tanner here. I came up with this wacky idea the other day that I'm not sure if I can make happen, so I'm going to hit up the drawing board and see what I can come up with. What I've come up with is essentially a series of various compartments. Here's an overview of what it would look like from the front and the side, and here's a top view of the base compartment. Here's the main structure, then there's a few interior structures with that. These will create a nesting spot for this piece that rests on the top, and then there'll basically be a pump down in here that will feed water up. There'll be a plate up here with a bunch of holes in it, and then it will rain down on the rest of the setup, or in theory that's what it should do. So let's go into the workshop and see if we can make this come to reality. I went through my scrap materials. I found some mirror, various soft cuts of glass, as well as the pump, so this should be enough to get me going in the right direction. I know we'll need more materials later on, but let's get to cutting some glass. This is not going to be the front, this is actually going to be the bottom, but before I start cutting it out, I just want to make sure that I have enough glass here. I'm going to have the pump pretty close to the back here, although I'll probably leave about a quarter of an inch gap in between that and the piece that's going to be here in the middle, just so that way if it is moving around, the reverberations aren't going to make a lot of noise. And then the piece that's going to be in the middle here will be about three inches deep, I would guess, and then the total measurement would probably be something about, say, six. I think a solid six will be able to get us the proper amount of space to kind of play with the idea. I'll show you a few quick hacks about cutting glass. Something you're going to have to take into account is the space on either side of the tool. You figure you're going to be running this up along the straight edge, so if you measure out for six and you cut it with this, you're going to get an eighth of an inch less than six, or it might be different based on your tool, but for mine it's an eighth of an inch, so I actually have to add an eighth whenever I'm making my measurement. And what I do is I set up the straight edge and I measure on the spot closest to me whenever I'm cutting, so I'll go to six and one-eighth inch. Again, I'm compensating for that cutting tool. I get my spring clamp here and clamp down this spot only. Check the measurement again, still six and an eighth. Sometimes it can move and it screws things up, and then I'll check the top measurement and I'll adjust that, because if you adjust this, it's not going to affect the bottom. So here, I'll move it here, still six and one-eighth. So I'll check this real quick, six and one-eighth. I got it good, and then I can make my cut. I have a little bit of lubricating oil here. I'll just put it on the tool here. Sometimes you can get a tool that's self-lubricating, so you won't have to do this. In my case, I don't have one, so I'll do that. Get a little bit of oil on there and I'll just run it lightly across the glass, like so, to get the oil distributed. And then I get the tool on the spot furthest from me, apply downward pressure consistently and evenly, and you should get a sound that's something like that. Pull it away, then you'll bring this up to the edge. Even downward pressure, you get the cut nice, just like that. Now, I screwed this up when I was scoring it. I moved it, so I'm going to have to recut this piece, but that at least shows you the process. So now that I've got an evenly cut piece, it's six on both, I just checked it. We've got to address the width. So this is just shy of 12. I think that's a little too much. I want to go, I think, I think nine. Nine would be clean. Let's go nine. I have all the pieces cut out for the main portion of the base. You'll notice that I cut this piece of glass to be slightly taller than where the top of this pump is. I did that so it's completely submerged at all times. We could have the water line slightly lower than this, and it will work fine. Before I can put this together, I got to do two things. The first thing I do typically is wet some sandpaper. This is 150 grit, and I'll sand the sharp edges of the glass. Wetting it prior will make it so that glass dust doesn't go up into the air. It's just a little bit safer. Got them all sanded. Now I can handle them safely. I'm just going to give them a quick rinse. The last thing that I need to do is just get a little bit of isopropyl alcohol and clean off all of the areas that will receive silicone. So get rid of dust and debris and just help the pieces stick together better. I added a little bit of tape so I can anchor this together after I apply the silicone. So I usually do it on the bottom first. You've probably seen in other tanks that I tape off areas on the glass to make the beads of silicone cleaner. I'm not doing that for this one because I'm going to build it slightly differently. You'll see what I mean later on in the build. The silicone job for this was fairly sloppy, but again it's not really going to matter with the way that I'm building this tank. Now that I got the base silicone and taped up, I'm gonna let this sit overnight, and then I'll return tomorrow and finish up the other components of the build. Here we are the next day. It's nice and solid and looking good. Gotta get it cleaned up though. I've got my razor scraper here, and I'm just going to scrape off all of the silicone except for what's in between the pieces of glass. So there's not actually going to be a seam inside the tank like you typically have since this is so small. It's not really needed, and I think it will just look cleaner if we can get rid of that. It's all cleaned up now and looking good. I'm going to do a quick water test because if this doesn't hold water then none of the project's going to work. It holds water perfectly. Now I can move on to the rest of the build. Before I cut out next pieces for this, I gotta count for the width and the height of the system. So I'll go the full width, and then the height will have to be slightly less than the overall height of this. I want there to be a gap underneath of the glass so the water can still be accessed by the pump. So I'm thinking a piece two inches high will be sufficient. Initially I was going to use the glass for this part, and then I remembered that I have white and black glass. So I'm actually going to use the part for the bottom and then white for the top. Alright, so I got two pieces completely cut out and processed. You'll notice that this one is slightly taller than this one. This is the front piece, which as I said is not quite the entire height of the system because I want water to be able to run underneath of it. And then this one will be for the back, and I cut it so short so that the pump can slide underneath of it. So I'm going to get these attached. What I'm going to do is just put a dab of hot glue right behind the glass here, just to keep it in place. And I'll apply the silicone in just a moment. The idea here is that the hot glue is going to hold everything in place while the silicone cures. And in doing that, I don't have to stop working each time I apply silicone. I wouldn't recommend this for an aquarium or something like that. Obviously I didn't do it for the outside, but this section I don't actually need it to hold water. I just need to be structural, so I could do it that way. I got these two pieces. I'm going to attach them on the sides here, and then I'll apply the silicone. All right, all these pieces are secure, so I'm just going to apply silicone in all of the corners except for the front of this, because I don't want to see it. I cut out another set of pieces here, and I'll attach these on the inside like so, and create a little lip. That way when we set the piece on top, it's not going to be moving around. It will be anchored by this little lip. As you can see, I've got the insert attached, and I also put another one on the inside that's dropped down. I added this piece to accommodate a piece of polycarbonate that I cut out on the table saw. This will be the drip plate, and I also cut a second one for the top piece. I taped both of them to this board, and I have a guide that I made on the computer. I'll tape this over the top as well, and then drill all these holes in. I doubled them up, so that way I only have to do it once. A lot of meticulous work later, and I ended up with these. They're not perfect, but they'll get the job done. One I could keep as is, and the other one I'm going to spray paint black to match the bottom of that. While the spray paint dries on the polycarbonate, I'm going to cut out the white glass and all the other pieces that fit on top of this. I got this piece cut out, and I want to put a uniseal up top here, so I made a little guide out of corrugated plastic, and I'll use the diamond-tipped hole saw to get a hole through there. I got all the pieces cut out and processed. I decided to tape off for the seams, and I got the silicone, so let's put it together. I got this all squared up and ready to go, and while it cures, I'm going to attach this piece to the base, and for that, I have black silicone. This one's a little bit more of a delicate piece, so I let the silicone cure overnight. I'm going to clear it off with the razor scraper, and then we can add the other components to this. I've got this piece all cleaned up and looking good, and as you can see, it rests perfectly on top of this piece. I'm pretty much done with most of the construction at this point. The last thing I got to accommodate for is the drip plate, and to do that properly, I'm going to cut out a few pieces of glass, and then I'll also need one to attach to the top. I've got all the pieces cut out and processed, and now I'm going to attach them to the top using the silicone and hot glue like I did previously. I got the lip secured to attach the drip plate. I actually had to double it up, though, because I guess I made a miscalculation with my measurements, and I should have used the thicker glass from the get-go, but I used the thin stuff, and this just fell all the way through without it, so I can get this secured now, and then we're almost done with all the glass. I applied silicone along the edges, and I'm just going to turn it upside down here, and I've got a pair of tweezers, and I'll use these to carefully drop it down in. I also need to apply some silicone in the top here. There's not really any rhyme or reason to it. I'm just going along the seams, and then I'll smooth it out in just a moment with my finger. Now that most of the glass is together, I can address the plumbing components. I just have various odds and ends here, a few tubes, and the uniseal I mentioned earlier, and the pump, of course. This piece connects into the pump and into the one end of the hose, and then this piece goes into the uniseal. That goes onto there, and this hose fits right into there. With the way the base is set up, I actually have to put in the pump before attaching the hose, so I'll get that in. Then the hose is attached. This goes on top, and the uniseal fits right into the hole. You may have noticed that I put a little bit of plumbing tape around the uniseal. I just did this so that it fits better into the hole and doesn't leak. At this point, we're pretty much good to go. I just got to give it a water test to see if it works out. Now that's what I'm talking about. It's always such a great feeling whenever you have some wacky idea like this, and you're putting all the pieces together. You don't know for sure if it's going to work, and then once you give it a test run, it works exactly how you had envisioned. It's just so cool to see this working, and I can't wait to get escaped. This is good to go. I'm going to seal it up with silicone and this piece of glass, but before I do that, I'm going to put a piece of metal mat in there. This will just diffuse the flow a little bit and make it slightly gentler as it's raining down into the terrarium. Now we can finally get to the fun part, the scape. For this one, I have some lava rock. I also have some weathered driftwood and manzanita twigs. I got gloves on, so I'm probably going to be super gluing some pieces together, so let's get these into the terrarium. I've got the hard scape all completed, and I really like how it turned out. As you saw, I used super glue and pulverized lava rock to combine all the pieces together, and I think as a single unit, it looks really cool. I have to attach it to the strip plate, but before I do that, I just want to make sure that the placement is good and that this piece still fits over the top. I think the placement of this is perfect, and I really like the way that the white background creates nice contrast. Now that we got this thing scaped, we can bring it to life with the plants. I have an array of mosses, including thread moss, badge moss, and java moss. I also have some rickia, a little bit of Anubias nanapetite, and of course, oak leaf creeping fig. I usually like to start out with the larger elements, which in this case is the Anubias and the creeping fig. Starting out with these will also allow me to hide the roots with the moss, so it's just easier to start here. I got all these plants situated, and now I can go and add the moss. It's all planted and looking good. I'm just going to spray it down real quick, because there's a few more things that we got to do before we can seal it up. I'm going to add the pump in here, but before I do that, I have a little piece of metallomat with the section cut out to nest the pump in. This will just make it easier to do maintenance later on. I'm going to fill the base of this with some gravel. I got these wooden pieces that I made. I cut out a few boards on the table saw, glued it all together, and then of course, I stained it and put on some polyurethane, and what these are is the one piece will go around the base, and then this one will go on the top. And of course, this piece goes over the top. Carefully set it in place. And there you have it, the reigning terrarium. I think it turned out really well, but you'll notice I made a few modifications near the end. I took the metallomat out of the top. I found it was having the opposite effect of what I intended, so I took that out, and I also removed the front piece of glass, but I made it so that I could put it back in if I want, or have a removed side option. Anyway, I really hope you guys enjoyed this project and learned something new, and until next time, SerpaSquad, take care and peace.