Marcel @ Reptile Lounge

Marcel is the new manager of the Reptile Lounge in Kempton Park. When it comes to caring for snakes, spiders, lizards and all manner of creepy crawly - Marcel is pure genius! He’s spent a lot of time and effort building up a special enclosure to show off our Desert Rock background and his beardie stock.

Here is a close-up of the adorable little beardies showing off their new home…

Reptile Lounge Display

Need advice and assistance rocking your reptiles?
Give Marcel a call on +27 (78) 398 6248, or if you are in the neighbourhood pop in to the Reptile Lounge - Plot 226, High Road (Old Pretoria Road) Pomona, Kempton Park

In Feb this year we found 8 of these adorable little critters hopping around amongst the squished remains of their siblings in a busy car park next to the swamp. 4 were given to a friend with a large pond on his farm and the other 4 have been enjoying a predator free stay in a spare tank we’ve kitted out for them.

We decided to build them a new poly-concrete home. Heres the build log…

Raw Materials

The usual suspects…

• Bits of throw away polystyrene packaging collected from the neighbor’s garbage
• Fibre flyscreen
• Concrete / Quickcrete / Buildcrete
• Pool filter sand
• Concrete stain pigments (Red, brown, yellow, white & black)
• 1 Large tube of marine grade silicon sealant
• A small powerhead/water pump/internal powered filter
• 50 or 75 watt submersible aquarium heater
• 60cm of 10mm silicone tubing

Construction Details

	Since egg-crate is so hellishly expensive here in SA we started off making our baseplate from strips of polystyrene joined to make something that vaguely resembles egg-crate. A layer of fibre flyscreen is placed ontop to prevent the soil from ending up in the bottom of the tank and also allowing water to flow underneath.
	We skipped the smelly part - shaping the polystyrene with an old soldering iron! Tip: wear a mask so u don’t get stoned on poly fumes! The pipework for the pump is neatly recessed into the removable background panel - outtasight, outtamind!
	The stepped waterfall is assembled in stages and sealed off with silcone. This was a mission of note and required about a hundred toothpicks to hold all the parts together whilst waiting for silicone to dry. The internal parts were painted black with a mix of colour stain and concrete prior to assembly.
	Concrete painted onto the polystyrene model. 6 coats later and the colour stain is added…
	After giving it around 5 days to cure we checked the water level and flushed out the dust…
	Checking the waterfall… looking goooood!
	Heres the important bits - pump, filter, and submersible heater. A couple of plastic pot scourers will provide a bit of mechanical filtration until I can get to the pet store to buy a powered internal filter.
	I think we’re about ready to plant now…
	One more just coz it looks kewl!
	Opted for the “instant lawn” approach since we haven’t the patience to grow grass and moss from scratch. A big thank you to a certain sports ground caretaker (who shall remain nameless) for unknowingly “lending us” some ready-made grass and weeds. I’m sure the little brown patch of dirt we left behind will fill in very quickly! lol
	A layer of and herbal potting soil mix underneath and the plants be planted!
	Add water and frogs. Do not stir unless you like muddy water…
	Wow! They dig it… literally!
	And there you have it! Happy frogs!
	Next step… building a lighting hood… To be continued…

The great thing about Point’n'Click cameras is that occasionally even n00b photographers like myself get some really awesome shots by accident…

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More photos of our Beardies

Never a dull moment around here at feeding time!

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More photos of our Beardies

Here’s a couple of in progress photo’s…

[Show as slideshow]

Chelsey’s snakey cage features a 3D granite style rock background with removable cave & matching water dish. The granite colour along with the antique green varnish stain used on the woodwork was chosen to contrast the reds and yellows of the corn snakes she wants to get.

Still quite a bit of work to be done and a couple of items to be purchased such as the heater pad, substrate, glass door panels and of course, the SNAKES!

Looking mighty good! Not bad for a 13 year old chicky!

• Using a hard plastic container shell for the base to minimise leaks
• Increasing the water capacity to 10 litres
• Placing the heater in upright position to improve heat dissipation
• Including a “built in wet/dry filter” compartment on the back of the waterfall

Heres a run down on the construction…

Raw Materials

• Bits of throw away polystyrene packaging collected from the neighbor’s garbage
• 10 litre plastic basin/container
• Concrete / Quickcrete / Buildcrete
• Playpen sand
• Coarse Salt
• Concrete stain pigments (Red, brown, yellow, white & black)
• Sheet of 4mm thick window glass
• 2 Large tubes of marine grade silicon sealant
• 500ml Powertex Hobby sealant
  (A trial sample of which was kindly donated to our cause by Bobby from Powertex’s local distributor)
• A small powerhead/water pump
• 50 or 75 watt aquarium heater
• 60cm of 10mm silicone tubing

Construction Details

	The hard plastic shell container used to form the base of the tank - chosen for it’s interesting shape!
	Cutting out the window area - quite a mission as the plastic shell is difficult to handle…
	The window cutout was bolted onto the back to form a solid mounting point for the waterfall. Don’t try and glue or silicone this plastic it just doesn’t hold!
	Now comes the tricky part - shaping the mountings for the window glass. This needs to be very rigid as glass will not bend along with the plastic shell!
	Lesson learned - If you don’t want to use 3 times more silicone than you should use, give it some elbow grease and sandpaper treatment to roughen up the plastic shell before attempting to stick bits of polystyrene on to it!
	A couple of hours of sticking all the random bits together and we’re on to the mountings for the pump and heater…
	Most of the hard work complete now and heres a basic view of what goes where…
	The filter compartment feeding into the back of the waterfall. We call it a “wet/dry” filter since part of the filter media will be exposed to air…
	Another view showing the removable pump cover…
	We’re aiming to make the hardware totally invisible so the the heater has it’s own cover too…
	The first layers of concrete are painstaking painted onto the polystyrene after shaping it with a soldering iron and candle…
	A bit of creative coloring with oxide stain pigments and it’s time to coat the concrete with Powertex sealant…And now the horrible part - waiting 2 to 4 weeks for the coating to cure properly before adding water…
	To be continued…

Lighting

We’ll definitely need to include some form of lighting for the tank to ensure healthy plant and fishy growth. We are currently looking for an adjustable “goose neck” type fitting that we can mount on the back wall of the waterfall - more on this later…

Result

We’re still waiting for the powertex coating to cure and after 5 weeks it’s not looking too good as it develops a thick white layer of film on contact with water!

It’s starting to look as if the powertex coating will not work and we’ll need to take a few steps back, sand it down and add a few coats of concrete over it… or maybe we’ll just be patient and wait a couple more weeks? lol

Back to the drawing board, or not…

The little daredevil cricket on Lemmy’s nose was the sole surviving member of “lunch” - the one that got away, only to return hours later and tempt fate all over again! lol

Version 1 proved to be a huge learning curve and a major challenge to boot. Heres a run down on the construction…

Raw Materials

• Bits of throw away polystyrene packaging collected from the neighbor’s garbage
• Concrete / Quickcrete
• Playpen sand
• Coarse Salt
• Concrete stain pigments (Red, brown, yellow, white & black)
• Sheet of 4mm thick window glass
• 2 Large tubes of marine grade silicon sealant
• 2 cans of matt finish lacquer varnish spraypaint
• A plastic pickle bottle
• A small powerhead/water pump
• 50 or 75 watt aquarium heater
• 60cm of 10mm silicone tubing

Construction Details

	No concept sketch for this one… We just started sticking bits together and ended with a usable idea!
	The position of the heater and pump, which is hidden from view by a removable “rock”
	A bit of shaping with a candle to remove all the rough edges and give the rocks a little more shape.
	The reason why you don’t do the messy bits in your kitchen or living room! lol
	Since polystyrene doesn’t stick to concrete and vice versa, the first layer of concrete is always the hardest. Keep trying and you’ll eventually get it covered completely.
	3 to 4 coats of concrete later and we’re ready to paint on the color stain. This part is seriously difficult and you only find the right colors mixtures by experiment. Start off with a light mixture of yellow, red and brown then and work towards your darker colors by adding a bit more brown, red and black oxide stain.
	Happy with the colors so we progress to the water test after 10 days of allowing the concrete to cure, and another 10 days for the lacquer varnish to cure… It holds around 4.5 litres of water but the waterfall splashes water onto the floor around it! Back to the drawing board!
	Some cosmetic changes. We lowered the waterfall and converted the previous waterfall outlet to an area to hold some small terrestrial plants.
	Whilst waiting for the concrete to cure we started work on the filter. It’s a very simple 3 stage “bottle filter” consisting of 2 sponge stages and a charcoal stage.
	The filter inlet pipe showing first and second stage sponge filter meterial. The plastic pipe in the centre has about 40 small holes burned in the tip using a small soldering iron.
	The assembled filter hanging off the back of the waterfall…
	After blocking up many small leaks with silicone sealer we were finally ready to add a bit of gravel and some live plants. The filter was pre-cycled in our indoor pond and gravel from an existing tank was added. We tested it for 2 weeks with some juvenile white cloud minnows before adding a healthy red male Betta.

Lighting

We’ll definitely need to include some form of lighting for the tank to ensure healthy plant and fishy growth. We are currently looking for an adjustable “goose neck” type fitting that we can mount on the back wall of the waterfall - more on this later…

Result

This took around 3 months to complete but it was a whole lot of fun and looks quite kewl! Our male Betta seems quite happy and healthy after 3 weeks in the tank. Water changes are minimal as there is a 20% loss of water through evaporation per week. We have been topping up with fresh treated water every third day and the water quality parameters have remained stable throughout.

We’ll be shipping the tank off to it’s new home in about 2 weeks time!

Raw Materials

• Snoop around in your neighbours garbage for bits of polystyrene packaging (a couple of days after xmas or payday is a really good time for this!). You could buy sheets of it too if you want to waste money!
• Concrete / Quickcrete
• Playpen sand
• Coarse Salt
• Concrete stain pigments (Red, brown, yellow, white & black)

Construction Details

It’s a pretty straight forward process that goes something like this:

	Start with a concept sketch and map out the placement of filter and heater.
	Stick bits of polystyrene together to form the basic shape of your design using marine/aquarium safe silicone. Remember that you’ll be adding a layer of concrete at least 5mm thick so allow for this on the sides and all the parts that fit together.
	Use a candle, soldering iron or hot air gun to burn the square edges off the polystyrene and make it look rock shaped.
	Mix some concrete - We used 1 part lafarge quickcrete 37.5 to 1 part playpen sand and 1 teaspoon coarse salt Paint concrete on to polystyrene with paintbrush. It may take several attempts to get it to stick but keep trying. Wait 12 hours and repeat the process until you have 4 or 5 layers. Use a mist spray bottle with a bit of salt water to lightly coat the dry layer cement in between coats.
	Wait 12 hours after the final coat then mix up some pigment colours (eg: for light reddish brown use 1 spoon red oxide, 3 spoons yellow, 1/2 spoon white and 1 spoon neat cement). Paint the colours onto the touch dry layer of cement using a paint brush or sponge. Experiment with darker and lighter shades to make it look more “rocky”.
	Silicone the completed contraption into your tank - use lots of marine silicone as polystyrene floats regardless of the the weight of the concrete around it (If you need to remove some of the polystyrene try drilling a small hole and squirting a bit of pure acetone into it - flush well with water afterwards). Now the hard part - wait at least 7 days for the concrete to cure in air before submersing it in 50:1 water and vinegar solution for a further 7 days (removes a bit of the alkalinity from the concrete).
	Check water parameters every day and up to 100% water change every 2nd day for about 2 weeks. Once stable, add plants, some pond snails and a couple of “crash test pilots” (feeders or whatever) if they survive the next couple of weeks you should be A for away…

Lighting Hood

You may discover that a standard plastic hood, apart from looking really crap, doesn’t focus the light correctly and the globes are quite visible. We decided to make our own hood from plywood, fitted with 2×14W compact florescent globes. Lots of wood filler required if you can’t cut straight! lol

Results

Results may vary! This worked for us (so far) but it may be a case of beginners luck! The 3 skippers have now been in the tank for 2 months and seem really healthy and happy. We lost a couple of test-pilot mollies but the skippers ate them so that don’t count!

Added bonus - 3 different colours of algae growth on the waterfall!