The Drip Wall Cherry Shrimp Paludarium

In this video I'm going to show you how to create a stunning drippable paludarium completely from scratch. I'll take you through the entire build and even show you how it looks after months of growing. Now let's get straight into the build. I'm going to start right at the beginning and create the glass tank that I'm going to build this ecosystem inside. This here is some second hand greenhouse glass. People are often getting rid of this stuff on places like Facebook marketplace and it's usually quite cheap. It will usually need a good clean beforehand but I've already taken care of that. The first step is to actually decide the dimensions of the tank. I've got an idea in my head but I just need to make sure it's doable with the glass that I've got to hand. I've made a list with all the pieces that I need so now it's time to start getting them cut out. Here are the tools that you're going to need. A ruler or tape measure to measure the cuts, a marker pen, something with a straight edge to cut the glass with, a glass cutter and some safety goggles. After marking the dimensions it's time to line up the straight edge ready to cut the glass. I've attached a few bits of blu-tac to the bottom of this spirit level that help it grip to the glass and stop it from sliding around. After lining up the glass cutter I'm pressing it down firmly and pulling it back in one smooth motion. Now there's a nice straight score line right down the glass which is where it's going to be forced to break. I'm placing down some wood that's got a sharp straight edge and then lining up the score line right alongside. Next I'm holding down the left side whilst gently pressing down on the right until the glass snaps. As you can see I'm left with a perfectly straight cut. If you're a beginner don't be intimidated it might look difficult but after a bit of practice you'll realize it's really quite easy. It does kind of look like I'm putting my entire body weight on the glass but that's not the case. I'm simply using the full length of my arm to apply even pressure and encourage the glass to break nice and straight. For the smaller pieces I'm switching to a ruler that's once again got some blu-tac underneath. After a bit of practice and of course a few mistakes you'll realize that cutting glass really isn't too difficult. Before I spend a good amount of time sanding and cleaning up all the edges I'm going to do a quick test fit. I'm using some electrical tape to hold the pieces together and then carefully assembling. I like to do this before sanding just to make sure everything's cut to the right dimensions. The edges of the glass are sharp at this stage so it's important to be really careful. All the pieces fit together perfectly so I'm going to take them apart and get them all sanded down. I've taken all the pieces outside and before starting I'm spraying the glass and sandpaper down with some water. Doing this helps eliminate the glass dust. I'm using 120 grit sandpaper and sanding until the edges are nice and smooth. Now that all the glass is sanded and dried I'm placing all the pieces in their correct location ready to be assembled. To join the pieces together I'm using some clear aquarium silicone. I'm starting off with the back and sides applying a bead of silicone about half a centimeter in size. Don't worry if they're not the neatest as it can all be cleaned up later but try not to leave any gaps as this will encourage leaks. Now I'm carefully placing in the back panel followed by the side. These can be a bit tricky to get in place just because they're the first ones. After ensuring everything's properly lined up I'm attaching the electrical tape before placing on the other side. Before attaching the front I'm going to use my finger to smoothen out the silicone on the inside of the glass. With the sides and back nice and smooth I can now install the front panel which is nice and straightforward. It's the next day and all the silicone is now fully cured. Now I can remove all the electrical tape and clean up all the excess silicone around the outside. This is easy as done with a sharp blade but of course be careful. With all the excess trimmed off it's looking a lot cleaner and I'm really happy with it. Now that the tank is complete it's time to start working on the inside. This is a black acrylic sheet that I'm going to use to create a fake background. It's going to sit right around here leaving a nice gap behind it where I can install a pump and a mechanism to create a dripple. It is a little bit short at the moment and needs to sit about here to be nice and flush with the top. I'm cutting down some egg crate which will help lift up the background as well as allowing water to pass through. It's looking good so I'm going glue it in place on the acrylic sheet. I'm using some sandpaper to scrape up the surfaces which will allow the glue to bond much stronger. I'm using some super glue which once dry becomes inert making it safe for these kind of setups. After a short while it's dried nice and solid. With that done I'm going to flip over the acrylic sheet keeping on this protective film to prevent from scratches. Next I need to come up with a way to hold up sheets of moss on the background. What I'm going to do is cut this tubing at an angle so it's nice and sharp and then attach these onto the background where I can then put the sheets of moss onto. Rather than gluing them straight on I'm going to drill some holes that they can sit in. I'm just going about halfway being careful not to go all the way through. Here at the top is where the water is going to drip from so I need to measure and drill some holes all the way through the acrylic. The wood underneath helps to stop the acrylic from blowing out. That should just about do it so I'm going to peel off the protective cover and get the supports glued in place. A small amount of super glue should hold them in place nice and strong. These supports will allow me to attach squares of foam with sheets of moss on top. I don't want the water to be able to flow through this entire bottom section so I'm going to block some off. I'm going to glue on this off cut of acrylic so that the water can only flow through a small gap on the right side. This is the small USB pump that's going to power the drip wall. Before I can install the pump I need to determine how much space it's going to take up so that I can install some spacers and supports on the background. I've measured and cut these to size using some egg cray. I'm gluing them in place making sure to scratch up the surfaces same as before for a stronger bond. Later on I'll attach this in place using some silicone but first I need to get the drip wall working. I need to be able to supply a constant drip of water out of each and every one of these holes. After a good amount of time thinking of the best way of doing this here's what I've came up with. I've taken an acrylic drinking straw and sanded one side down so much that there's a gap running all the way through. This can then sit flush on the inside of the background where it connects all the output holes. Hopefully when I plug the ends and supply it with water the water will flow out nice and even through the holes. I'm making a hole through the straw which is where the water will enter from the pump. Drilling the straw will likely cause it to crack or snap so I'm melting it through instead. Next I'm taking some aquarium tubing and making a v-cut on one end. This will be attached onto the straw using some more super glue. After letting the glue dry and shortening the tubing down it's nice and solid. Next to go on is going to be a 90 degree push fitting. This needs to be able to fit into the gap so I'm going to trim off some more tubing. Now that it fits perfectly I'm going to get it attached in place. I'll apply some silicone later to ensure it's got no leaks but for now I just need to plug up the ends. Next I'm going to glue in all the angled black tubing for the output holes. Now they're all in place it's starting to look really tidy. Next I'm going to install this flow control valve. This will allow me to control the water flowing out of the drip wall. On the end I'm attaching another 90 degree push fit in which points straight down to where the pump's going to be. Some tubing on the pump allows me to attach another drinking straw nice and snug. Instead of the water flowing straight to the top I'm going to try something out but I'm not quite sure it's going to work. I'm installing a splitter which will split the flow in two and hopefully allow me to have another output towards the middle of the scape. My idea is to have a waterfall starting about halfway up the background. After drilling a hole through I'm piecing together some push fittings and tubing to connect everything together. It's looking really clean but let's give it a test run and see if it works or not. The waterfall flows great but there's just not enough power from the pump to feed the drip wall as well. After spending a bit of time trying to get them both to work I just don't think it's going to happen. I think the solution would be for them to run on individual pumps but to be honest I'm going to take it back a step and just focus on the drip wall. For the most part it's working well but there is a strange problem that I didn't really expect. Due to the number of outputs and how narrow they are I think the water is struggling to break the water tension at the end of some of the holes. After a little while of trial and error I found a really easy solution. I took a long thin piece of filter foam and fed it through each one of the outputs. For some reason this completely fixes the problem and each hole is dripping evenly and consistently. Now that I'm happy with how the drip wall is working I'm going to start attaching and sealing things in place with silicone. I made sure to clean and dry everything before applying the silicone. With silicone on the back and bottom I can now firmly press the background in place. I'm using some tape to narrow down the nozzle of the silicone. I can then insert it in the small gap and apply a small bead up the left and right side. Believe me it's much cleaner to do the sides once the background is in place. It's the next day and the silicone is fully dried. I've installed a foam mat to the base of the tank to help protect the glass from uneven surfaces. Now that the tank is finally complete I can start creating the ecosystem inside. I'm gonna start with this black lava rock for the hardscape. I like its dark color and the fine detail in each piece. The main purpose of these is to create a base for the wood that's going to go in next. Here I've got a few wooden branches that I found myself on a walk in the woods. I've given them a really good clean and dried them out in the sun for a good few weeks to help reduce chances of pests. My idea is to try and create escape that branches out and upwards from this left corner. I want to try and make it quite dramatic with branches extending outside of the tank. After a whole lot of trial and error this is what I've settled on. I'm really happy with it and I think it makes a great skeleton that I can build on with plants later. Currently the wood is balancing in place and being held up by a wooden skewer so I'm going to need to lock it down to make it more stable. I'm wedging some tissue between the wood and then soaking it in some liquid type super glue. I've repeated this for all the pieces until everything is locked together. To make it even more stable I'm going to apply some silicone between the joints. This might be a bit overkill but the last thing I want is for one of the branches to break off a few months down the line. It's the next day and the hardscape is feeling nice and solid. As I mentioned at the start the idea for this build is to have moss growing throughout the entire background of the scape. This is some coarse filter foam and it should be the perfect medium for the moss to grow on. Its coarse texture will allow the moss to attach easily as well as allow the water to easily pass through from the drip wall. To make it more manageable I'm cutting it into squares and then slotting it in place between the spikes. Originally I planned to push the foam into the spikes on the background but it's not really working that way. It's either too spongy or the spikes aren't sharp enough. Luckily it works just as well for them to be wedged between the rows of spikes. Next I'm going to create a nutrient layer at the base of the tank. To do this I'm going to break apart some root tabs and then spread them out across the glass in the areas that I likely add plants. Now I'm going to cap them off with some fine sand. Leaving the root tabs exposed will cause a nutrient imbalance and will likely lead to some algae problems. I will be adding lots of leaf litter and live plants later that will cover up the majority of the sand but for the parts that are showing I do want to try and make it as natural as possible. Some different sized gravel as well as some small lava rocks should help achieve this. I think it's about time I start getting some plants inside but beforehand I'm going to fill the tank up with water and get the drip wool flowing. As the sponge is bone dry it's not flowing very naturally but now that it's saturated it's working a whole lot better. It really doesn't look like there's any water movement whatsoever coming down the sponge but after I remove a square you can see it's flowing really nicely. This really is perfect and has given me a lot of confidence that I'm going to be able to grow a lush green carpet of moss along the back wall. This is some Christmas moss and in my opinion it's the perfect species for this kind of build. It grows and spreads in dense patches instead of growing leggy strands like some other species would. It also attaches itself really well to whatever surface it's growing on. To get the moss growing on the sponge I'm going to do something that might seem a bit odd. I'm using some scissors to trim the moss into tons of small pieces. I'm then going to take my finger and do my best to spread it and get it tangled and caught up throughout the sponge. This will stop it from falling off and give it some time to attach and start growing. Essentially what I'm doing is seeding each square of foam with hundreds of particles of moss which will all individually start growing and connecting to create a dense carpet background. That's all the moss planted and I know it doesn't look too good at the moment but I'm trusting with some time it's going to form a lush green background. This is some hygrophila and I think it'll look nice growing around the wood towards the back of the scape. To plant it I'm simply wedging it behind the wood where the roots can access the water flowing through the sponge. The majority of the plants that I'm going to use are typically sold for use inside aquariums. With that said they do grow really well out of water but they are prone to drying out. Next I've got a few different epithites that I'm going to plant throughout the tank. These should thrive in the conditions that the drip wall provides. However because this tank doesn't have a door or lid and is exposed to the open air they might struggle due to lack of humidity. I may have to spray them down to help get them acclimated but only time will tell. I think the Bucephalandra looks great in this gap at the base of the wood. With a few species planted above the water let's move underneath. As the water is quite far down from the light source and is shaded by hardscape and other plants I need to choose species that can tolerate this. Anubias and Bucephalandra are the obvious choice. To make planting easier I've mounted them to some rocks using some thread and I can now simply place them throughout the scape. They instantly bring some life to the water which is what it was missing. Moving back above the water I'm planting in some cuttings that I pulled out of another setup. I really like the detail that these add between the wooden branches. With the majority of the plants in I'm already loving how this paludarium is looking but next I want to add something to make it look even more natural and to add some more detail. Here I've got a selection of different leaves that I've been soaking in water for a couple days. Pre-soaking them helps them sink to the bottom right away. I think adding this leaf litter has really helped bring the natural look that I was going for. I can only imagine it'll look even better with some plants growing amongst the leaves. This Leliopsis and Glossostigma really help bring it all together. These here are epithetic plants known as bromeliads. They naturally grow in rainforests attaching themselves to tree branches rather than growing in soil. I think they'll look great in this setup growing on the wood to add that rainforest feel. I'm using some thread to tie this one down to the wood. With time it'll grow its own anchoring roots that will attach itself. Another way to mount these plants is by drilling a hole into the wood and then mounting their stem inside. This is my preferred way of mounting them because it's a lot more discreet and doesn't leave the eyesore of thread or zip ties. Just make sure you don't drill the hole too large as you want it to be a nice tight fit so it doesn't fall out. These plants won't be sustained by the drip ball and I'm going to have to manually water them once or twice a week. For the lighting I'm going to use this Twin Star Aquarium Light. It fits perfectly on top but I have added a bit of blue tack to give it some grip and stop it from sliding. It's nice and bright and should do a great job at growing and bringing out the colors of the plants. The last thing that I'm going to do is take some black acrylic paint and fill out the left and right side before leaving this ecosystem to grow. It's been two and a half months since I created this ecosystem and I'm glad to say that it's doing really well. The plants have grown in nicely but what I'm most excited about is the moss covered background. The Christmas moss has slowly grown and spread throughout the entire background of the paludarium. It's so amazing to see and the fact that it works just as planned is so relieving. The drip walls continue to work perfectly with no problems whatsoever. It's completely silent and to be honest you can't even tell that there's water running down and through. As for the other plants the majority are doing really well. The Hygrophila has grown these beautiful purple flowers and the Anubias has got a couple new leaves which is great to see. The only plant that's really struggled is the bulbitis. A lot of the leaves have dried up and died due to lack of humidity but there are some new ones coming through so I've got my fingers crossed. Now let's take a look at the plants and life under the water. The plants have all been doing well with some nice new growth and little to no signs of any algae. Some leaves are dying off but there's new healthy ones coming through to replace them. As for life I added a small group of red cherry shrimp a few weeks ago. They've been doing really well and it's nice to have some creatures moving and living inside this ecosystem. I've been doing a 30% water change every one to two weeks and I spray the tank down at least two or three times a week. I do add a couple pumps of aquarium plant fertilizer to this bottle just to make sure the plants have got enough nutrients. I'm extremely happy with how this paludariums came together and even happier that I built it completely from scratch. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this build in the comments and as always thank you for watching.