Custom Building An Terrarium for my buddy Smaug

[WisePrey]

So after watching some of the awesome videos from Lizard Landscapes and getting a new 40 gallon tank this week. I have decided to upgrade my Dragons enclosure and make it really awesome. So I am going to make a rock wall with a castle sticking out of it.

This thread will be more of a day by day journal of my progress on this that I hope people will enjoy reading and find it inspirational.

My Beardie, Smaug loves to explore his current cage and he tends to be pretty active, so I believe he will find his new enclosure a lot of fun.

Here is a simple plan of what I'm going for. I used paper to cut out basic shapes.

The castle will have 2 openings as well as a hidden ramp around the back to go to the top of the walk wall and the 2nd level of his enclosure.

The materials that I currently have - Unfortunately the glue pictured does not work with Styrofoam AT ALL - it literally ate through it. The foam boards are 4 12"x28"x0.5" I have a couple bigger pieces that I'm going to order from Amazon this week to build the rock wall.

A close up of the paints that I have started out with. Went with the Americana Acrylics as they were $1 at my local art shop. Colors I picked out is White, Desert Sand, Slate Grey, Milk Chocolate, Burnt Sienna, and Black.

And even though I don't have glue to put it together, The first few pieces of the castle wall have been cut out and I have taken a picture of everything standing up (House of cards style).

And lastly, Smaug himself enjoying his current enclosure.

That's it for now. Will post more as progress continues this week and next!

 

[CooperDragon]

That's an ambitious project! I look forward to following your progress =)

 

[WisePrey]

Alright, I have continued to build this project today. Didn't get too much accomplished as building the stairs was pretty hard. Even with liquid nails it was hard to build it and keep it together. Here's another batch of pics of the build.

First up, I have glued the main body of the castle together.

The first step to building the stairs was to cut out 1.5"x5" steps. I used a hot knife to cut mostly clean and straight pieces.

Now you see the stairs put together. Ran into a little problem as for some reason I thought my cage was 18" high when it's only 16" high. So the initial stairs only had maybe 3" of clearance at the top of the cage. So I had to cut off about 3" from the supports to make it fit.

Lastly. Here is the two parts inside of the aquarium. While doing this I realized the backwall of the castle is actually not needed, so I will be cutting that off tomorrow. This will give my beardie a lot more space inside the castle to hide. There is also still a little trimming left to do on the stairs to make it a better fit.

The plan is to have half of the steps be covered in the rock wall that is going to surround the castle.

More to follow tomorrow!

 

[WisePrey]

Not too much progress today, but there is a short update anyway on the journey.

I added the 2nd level to the castle as well as some nice arches for the entry ways.

Last image is again everything in the cage. You can see I trimmed down the stairs quite a bit to make it a better fit! They do have a very snug fit so I will have to trim them down some more still.

I am planning on starting with the rock wall on the back tomorrow!

 

[WisePrey]

Alright so I have an update of the current build. Unfortunately the cage isn't going to be appropriate for a bearded dragon. I am probably going to try to use it for some geckos instead. I am still going to update this thread however for anyone curious about it.

First up is the side wall. Starting to add details to the rock wall so make it look realistic. There is a nice hide here. The front piece is separate and will be easy to remove, as the cage is now being built for geckos, I plan to keep their moist hide in here and want to be able to pull it out.

This is their back wall, still lots of detail needed to make it look good. You can see one side is cut shorter than the other, it sits on top of a stair ramp.

Lastly, the whole thing in the enclosure. The ledge on the back wall being so high is where I realized that it wouldn't work for a beardie (would be way to close to lights).

More to come in a day or two