Tiny Bioactive Terrarium || Baby Orchid Mantis Setup

In this video we are going to turn this drab little enclosure into an amazing little

bioactive

enclosure and this is how we do it, so this is one of the new dense enclosures set up. This is just a prototype, so I don't know if this one is going into production yet, so the top opening enclosure is good for tarantulas and invertebrates and things like that. For me I will eventually use it as a

mantis

setup

, I think it's pretty good, it comes flat packed and you get to rebuild it but we have to start cleaning it so you need some reptile disinfectant and a rag and basically just rub it down Alright, you don't know what's left there from manufacturing purposes, so it's always best to just clean up.

It only takes 10 minutes, so being made for invertebrates it is not waterproof, so 100 silicone sealant and seal it, go over all the bottom joints where plastic meets plastic, in all the nuts and bolts, everything, make sure it's really airtight, you're going to need your silicone, like I say, 100 of silicone and your piece of machinery to put the silicone in there, really check every little bit, you don't want leaks if you're going to convert one of these to bioactivity a bit. sneak peek for you here you see this little thing I'm using to hold the door open it's a little dog harness we're going to start harness training hugo my savannah monitor if that's something you're interested in make sure do it.

Press the subscribe button. I'm very proud of how this turned out, but it's time to move on to the next stage of building the background. We have to measure the size. We will cut the Styrofoam into the correct sizes and show you. interesting little trick on how to shape it so it has enough room but make it look three dimensional and it is three dimensional you need to cut it out be careful with a sharp knife we ​​needed to take Note the little supports that are on the side they are just there to help secure it and make it rock solid, so we needed to cut those little edges, cut it out and make sure everything fits perfectly, this one does, but now is the time. we have all these little leftover parts available and a lighter oh no, what are we going to do right?

This is it, we use heat to melt the styrofoam just slightly, you have to run the heat over it, we're going to use all these little extra pieces just to add a little more three dimensional dimensions to the actual background. Now it won't be as thick. If it were this thick originally, it would take up too much space. Drive in a screwdriver. the bottom of the styrofoam so you don't hold the styrofoam while the flames are there and quickly pass the flame once you've done this you'll start to get these little effects like I said you have to be really quick to figure out where you really are.

If you want these extra extras to be, do the same trick on the bottom with the lighter, just heat it up, give it that natural three-dimensional look, figure out the exact location where you want it, make sure it's nice and secure, you can check it out. again with the lighter just to make sure everything fits together really well, it doesn't look like anything was added in there, add a little bit of silicone or some tacky glue, absolutely anything to adhere them both and let them dry for a good while. 24 hours, make sure they are rock solid before you start handling them once again.

A good tip is that you can use a box, a book or something, turn it over and place it on top, that will help keep them together while they are. they are drying, but when they are drying you can put them together like this and mark the locations that way the extra extras can go between one background piece and another background piece and it will really make it look like it's flowing really well and everything is one piece in Instead of just sticking it together and just continue the same process on the back panel and both side panels add your silicone to the extra extras, stick it on your desired background piece and lay them all out nice and flat so they can all cure overnight morning now this is where it can get quite tricky, we're going to cover the nasty white styrofoam bottom with silicone, we're going to put a ton on it, I really enjoy using it a ton, rub it all over with your finger and get every little bump and crack absolutely covered, really you want to cover this with silicone, it can get really messy, so you go into the substrate, you need a dry substrate, this is my substrate mix, I'll go over it later in the video, but I put the styrofoam bottom.

Well, I'll shake it off, hopefully the substrate has stuck to the silicon you put down. If you need more, put a little more and you will see that some white will show. If that happens, just get more silicon. Put a little blob in there, put a little more substrate on top and you'll end up with something like this. Now you want to do it on the bottom three sections, which is the back panel and the two sides, this is an important part. Make sure you cover every little white aspect with substrate, then it's time to test the background pieces inside the cabinets.

Make sure they still fit with the extra width added by the substrate, once you've measured everything it fits. very good, once you are satisfied that they all fit together very well, it doesn't matter if there is a small gap like you see in the back corners here, which can be filled in later, take out the pieces and add a little more silicone in the back of the styrofoam. I like to use quite a bit to make sure it is extremely secured to the bottom so it doesn't fall off in time. Press nice and firm to make sure it's nice and solid. you'll be perfectly fine, do this on all three sections of the back panel and then continue with the little gaps we saw in the back corner.

The way we find them is to fill the capsule with silicone and then add more substrate. on those seams the best and easiest way to do this is to turn the cabinet upside down and add quite a bit just cross both sides and pack the substrate making sure it's nice and secure once again make sure your substrate is extremely dry, otherwise this won't work once you're done with all the small areas you can see. Make sure you let it air out with the lid closed for a good 24 hours. Make sure all those fumes are gone before you continue. to the next step which is the drainage layer first thing first you have to empty all the residual substrate that remains then admire your work find out what drainage material you are going to use for me I am going to use this bio vida drainage medium, wash it well, it is very , very dirty and dusty, once washed pour it into the bottom of the cabinet, this just adds a water table like we would have naturally in our world, you need a separation between the drainage layer and your substrate for me, I use this mesh window tent, cut it to size, I like to make it a little bigger and push it down on all the corners, making sure it overlaps a little.

Now this is the substrate that we are going to use. use this is my version of a substrate if you want to see how to do it. I've made a video and I'll link it above just for you. Now I like to use a large amount of substrate just to allow for deep rooting. growth, the roots can actually grow from the plants into the substrate, making them extremely safe within the enclosure, so add a deep layer of substrate, then compact it with your fingertips making sure everything is nice and secure and then decide which plants you are going to use, we are very lucky here at northern exotics, we have a wide variety of plants that we grow in-house so we can use whenever we want, however this is a small enclosure so we have a small weeping tube here we simply dig a small little hole we allow it to go as deep as possible just to help make it nice and safe we ​​have a lovely little pathos we remove the bottom leaves just to again allow for deep root growth we can make the plant very deep now these plants are going to grow quite large, quite wild and quite vinyly, which is exactly what I want in this enclosure, so we have this little one, this will just cause a little bit of covering along the lower layers of the substrate after To do this, we like to add to our cleaning equipment, which are tropical gray springtails and isopods, some leaf litter and then we're almost done with the interior apart from the vines, after all, this is a praying

mantis

.

To close it, you will need something to upload to the diesel phones that we have made ourselves. If you want to see how we made them, I'll link a video on the top cards right now. We'll put it below. plant so that plants can grow around it as well as on it and over it, but we always like to go further, so we're not just going to add one, we're going to add another one on top the praying mantis likes hang upside down so they can shed their original skin, so we give them that option here.

Give everything a good water, make sure to saturate the substrate to allow the plants to begin to thrive on a good board, grow as if we were using the reptile. Systems Pro 10 LED Light here we like this one because we have used it in several other enclosures and the plant species we have chosen here will thrive under that light, so we basically leave it for about a month to allow for a column of bacteria to be seen and then add the animal. Thank you very much for watching. If you liked the video, please consider liking and subscribing.