How to make a paludarium

[Arrowanaoscars]

So as my title says I am trying to build my first paludarium the only problem is I want it to be reptile or fish safe.With that being said any of you more experienced guys want to give me tips. For example exact names of types of Styrofoam that would be safe how to make it safe types of silicon that wouldn't hurt fish or reptiles would be great. im making a 55 gallon paludarium for either a salamander (not sure what type yet) or a small frog that may be housed with small fish as well
If there are any links you may have that would also be great. I tried searching for types of Styrofoam to use and if it needs to be coated but got a lot of misleading articals so i figure asking on here would be the best and safest.

 

[Arrowanaoscars]

bump

 

[Fat Homer]

^ For the styrofoam part, i would look up some of the 3D Background designs people on here make, since they use the materials you would be talking about... so it would just be a matter of working out a design that works for your situation...

But as for the paludarium part... i guess there are a lot of ways you could go with setting it up depending on what you wanted to do... mine for example has literally all water on the base, with a lifted up land area so the fish have maximum floor space to explore... where as others may just build up a land area from below the water line by piling dirt higher up on one end...

 

[Arrowanaoscars]

what would your recommend for the dirt and some beginner plants

 

[Mount_Prion]

^ For the styrofoam part, i would look up some of the 3D Background designs people on here make, since they use the materials you would be talking about... so it would just be a matter of working out a design that works for your situation...

But as for the paludarium part... i guess there are a lot of ways you could go with setting it up depending on what you wanted to do... mine for example has literally all water on the base, with a lifted up land area so the fish have maximum floor space to explore... where as others may just build up a land area from below the water line by piling dirt higher up on one end...

I used the piling up dirt method.

Something to consider though is that a pile of dirt will just collapse in water, especially if there's water flow and animals moving it about.

So what I did was either build up the walls of the land areas with rocks/driftwood and then fill in the middle with dirt, or sort of build a large structure out of rocks/dw and roughly fill in the gaps with dirt and moss.

As for type of dirt, that really depends on what you're trying to house.

Different reptiles (and I think amphibians) can't be around certain substrates because if they swallow them their bowels can become impacted, leading to health issues and/or death.

I'd recommend any anubias as a beginner plant. They're not demanding at all in terms of requirements and can be fully aquatic or survive with bits sticking out of the water.

I just linked this in another post, but here's the one I'm almost done building:

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?492312-Swamp-Thing&highlight=swamp+thing

 

[Arrowanaoscars]

i like the idea of building a wall i planned on putting a pound liner around the plastic shelf that will hang above the 1/2 full tank and have a 3d background to hid the canister intake and outtake hoses and for the return i planed to make a stream also lined with a layer of poundliner and some sort of gravel with moss on the side right now for stock im still not sure but guppies always make good test