#would love to hear any input or suggestions from people who've built paludariums.. i'm a total noob at this

[kirstielol]

🦀 vampire crab paludarium rambling 🦀

so i've been doing tons of research into this build, i really wanna take my time with this and make it perfect. i've built a lot of bioactive arid and humid enclosures before, but never attempted a paludarium.

in my initial planning i thought i was going to use a pump for the waterfall feature, but after reading more into it and seeing other peoples attempts, it looks like that's not a great idea? seems like it's hard to both conceal the pump (which needs to be submerged in the water), and have it able to be accessed if you need to do some maintenance.

i was reading a dart frog forum and someone mentioned that canister filters are a much better idea for this! they're external filters that take water out of the tank, filter it outside of the tank, then pump it back into the tank. so it's like a filter and a pump in one?? seems perfect for what i want to build, the only thing is they're pretty expensive.. $130 for the small canister filter i want, vs. the $20 pump i was originally planning on 🙃 so that really shot up my build cost.

i'll probably split up the build cost over 3-ish months. i don't need to buy everything right away. i'll start on the hardscaping this month, get the filter, filter foam, stones, and driftwood, and work on the placement of everything. next month i can add the substrate and plants and let it grow in for a while, then once it's up and running for a few weeks, i'll buy and add the crabbies 🦀🦀🦀

i'm planning on doing the spray foam + silicone method to hold all the hardscaping together, and create a nice looking background. i'm soooo excited for this build, i hope it turns out as nice as i'm picturing in my head 🌱