Nah, I posted this at work and tried to edit once I looked closer and saw that the top was sticking out. The idea I had in my head was basically having a reptile habitat completely submerged, dead center in a huge tank...like a 6x5x4 tank with a 3x2x1.5 habitat centered. 4 posts on the 4 bottom corners of the habitat that go straight through the bottom of the of the aquarium, from here you could feed oxygen and possibly get creative with some sort of vacuum (although probably not with the vac). 1 more tubes at the top for the purpose of dropping in food etc.
Ar0wan...as far as the creatures not having gills...whats that matter? They aren't under water. Their cage/habitat is completely sealed from the water, it'd be dry in there.
The problem with having it completely submerged like that (as mentioned) would be maintenance on the terrarium/habitat. You would have to drain the aquarium to below the level of the habitat, and even then you would have to find an easy way to create a seal on the lid that you can open whenever you need to (i.e. not silicone). Having it stick above the level of the aquarium water would make this MUCH easier (no need to seal the top or worry about the heat lamps etc etc) but i wouldn't look as cool
Anyways its a cool idea for the stupid-rich of the world, but maintaining something like that for the average hobbyist would be far too difficult methinks. At least if you did it with the amount of style it deserves.
edit: and birds is just what I happened to stumble across online. I'm not a fan of keeping birds at all as it is. For some reason I'm ok keeping fish in a confined aquarium, cats & dogs confined to a house/yard etc etc. But I just can't really bring myself to cage a bird. Not sure why I make that difference in my head, I'm just not a fan of caging a bird. I think the only way I could do it is if I had a trained hawk that I could let fly & would come back to me. If I COULD by some stretch of the imagination set this aquarium/terrarium thing up, it would definitely house a reptile of some sort.
Another cool thing could be to have a really deep tank, like 5 feet deep. Get another tank thats about 4 feet deep. Set it up so that the inner tank is just above the surface of the outer tank. Put an overflow in from the larger to the smaller and somehow get it so that only the bottom foot to foot & a half of the inner tank holds water. Basically build yourself a waterfall in the inner tank & maybe keep turtles or something in it with some way for them to get in the inner tank with dry land spots and back out to the outer tank for loads of swimming room etc etc.
You could set up some pretty baller setups for the rich & famous this way
edit again: Basically take the_deebs paludarium and submerge it in a tank twice its size with some sort of overflow system to keep the same amount of water in it coming from an overflow designed to look like a real miniature waterfall
