Building My Next Giant Ecosystem Vivarium III- The Next Chapter

NEW VIDEO: Building My Next Giant Ecosystem Vivarium III: The Next Chapter


I’ve built my next giant ecosystem vivarium, and it is the biggest, most complex vivarium structure I’ve ever built. It will house a plethora of different species of animals, plants, and fungi, creating a habitat for plenty of life. But the construction of this highly unique tank came with its own set of challenges. Hope you enjoy Season 4, Episode 1 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series. Ant love forever! This video was shot in 4K Ultra HD resolution.

 

Building My Next Giant Ecosystem Vivarium III: The Next Chapter

So I may be a bit crazy, but I think I’m about to reach a whole new level of crazy! This is Pantdora, my cloud rainforest floor vivarium, home to a plethora of exotic life and biological relationships aplenty. It’s attached to a second vivarium on the floor above called Orchadia, the rainforest’s treetops, home to its own menagerie of tree-dwelling creatures.

But I have a great surprise! After months of painstaking planning and decision-making, I’m finally ready to reveal my next grand and exciting biological project, sure to hands down blow your mind. AC Family, behold the next generation: Giant Vivarium III, set to be the biggest and most challenging vivarium I’ve ever attempted in my life. Welcome to the next chapter in our giant rainforest saga! Season 4 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series starts now.

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What is this third giant vivarium, you ask? Will it be connected to Pantdora and Orchadia? Well, I’ll be sharing all the details of our Giant Vivarium 3 in a bit, but I’ll be honest. I decided to go all out with this next tank.

Pantdora broke the internet with its evolution as a rainforest. Orchadia, the first of its kind, allowed us a unique peek at a whole new world existing in the rainforest canopy. But this next tank had to be different, a true step above the rest. It would require all my life’s knowledge in vivariums as well as resources to execute.

Months prior, I had the blueprints drawn up. I wanted this third vivarium to be even bigger than the previous two. The entire setup was 10.5 ft long, and the living area about 5.4 ft tall, and deeper than the other two vivaria at 2.5 ft. It also came in two parts, which I’ll get more into later.

When completed, Giant Vivarium 3 would be the largest, most complex chunk of living natural space I’ve ever created in my life—a dream vivarium just full of opportunities to learn about the natural world. Stay tuned for the grand reveal of what biome this new vivarium is later in the video.

But let’s play a game: try to guess the biome and leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll be giving you clues along the way. Now, I didn’t know it yet, but the adventure would begin even before putting any life in, right at the building stage of Giant Vivarium 3, where the construction of this massive and complex vivarium would not quite go as planned.

Over the holidays, my team and I had been super busy rearranging the Ant Room. We moved Volcania and the Crimson Knights, my fire ant colony, who by the way are still doing well, to a new place to accommodate the new tank build. This was where I chose to move them because where they were was where Vivarium 3 was going to be built. It was the perfect spot for it.

When the Ant Room was first built three years ago, I anticipated I’d be building such a setup in this exact spot, so I made sure to have a drain, hose, and power source built here. Once the spot was prepped, we were ready to begin building.

Here’s the first clue as to what biome I’m hoping to construct for this vivarium. Giant Vivarium 3 will contain water, a lot of it, more than the 25-gallon blackwater pond of Pantdora and the little canopy puddles of Orchadia. But incorporating such an amount of water required some very specific features.

First, the structure itself had to be completely different, designed to hold a large amount of water. Now with the way Pantdora and Orchadia were made, the pieces of glass were fixated together using a joint. This joint was then siliconed. However, I quickly realized that this design was a bit problematic, as the setup leaked a couple of times and we had to reseal it as needed.

It was imperative that Giant Vivarium 3 had to be absolutely 100% waterproof! There was no room for error, as it could potentially kill a lot of life once established. The setup had to be leak-free, so this time, the vivarium had to be glass against glass, with no joint.

Additionally, with a greater amount of water, the base of the vivarium had to be much stronger than that of the previous two vivaria. I had a custom-made base fashioned from steel, strong enough to carry 6 tonnes of weight. It was vital for Giant Vivarium 3’s bed to be solid!

The base was carried up into the Ant Room and placed here. It may seem a bit off-center at first, but I chose this spot so it wouldn’t surpass the beam above it and fall below a net floor above. When it’s all done, you’ll see that it turned out to be the perfect spot.

Also, the large amount of water in Giant Vivarium 3 meant greater pressure pushing outward against the glass panels. Certain structural pieces, which weren’t really needed for Pantdora and Orchadia, had to be incorporated into the design to ensure the glass wouldn’t break from all the water.

Overall, on paper, it was easily the most complicated structural build for a vivarium I’ve ever attempted. But on building day, when the truck and building team arrived at my home, I was stunned at just how complicated the build would actually be.

Our Giant Vivarium 3 required a total of 30 separate pieces of glass of varying sizes, each of which had to be unloaded from a truck by hand. The pieces were carefully carried into my home, up the stairs, and into the Ant Room on the second floor. Each piece was laid down until we were ready for assembly. The final piece was this massive front panel.

I held my breath throughout the entire transport process. And then, when all was set, we began the assembly process. The main pieces were siliconed into place, and what an adventure it was!

Here’s another clue: have a look at the back glass panel. That ledge marks where the waterline will be. The whole setup won’t be just water. It will be… ummm… other things too. In total, this vivarium would be housing 450 gallons of water—380 gallons in the main tank and 70 gallons for the sump.

This brings us to another clue regarding this setup. This vivarium required an entirely separate living space below, known in the aquarium hobby as a sump. This area would house a plethora of critical microbial life to keep the water portion of the entire vivarium clean and livable for all its creatures. Aquatic creatures will also be living down here in the sump as well. Holes were drilled into the bottom glass panel to accommodate the necessary piping.

All parts were siliconed into place. This stage was super critical because water would be able to find the slightest weakness or space in the sealant and spring a leak. The team made sure to check all the work three times to ensure there wouldn’t be a single leak. I prayed there wouldn’t be.

Next, we needed to construct framing, doors, and mesh ventilation. A separate team came in to help build that. The frame would line the exposed edges of glass, coverings for the sump area, and a top canopy, as well as all doors into the tank.

Now, while the team was finishing that up, let’s do a quick update on the residents of Pantdora and Orchadia, shall we?

Waking up from his slumber due to all the noise was Godzilla, our resident spectacled caiman. He’s grown into a big boy and has been eating a lot. He gazed at the next vivarium being constructed with great interest. I wonder what he was thinking.

Another reptile watching all the action was Snap, our resident sun skink. He’s now a young adult, quite large and content, but still shy. He’s been feasting on the plethora of crickets that are experiencing a population boom at the moment. The males were singing, filling the Ant Room with cricket music.

Crematogaster ants were busy milking honeydew from mealybugs and constructing new tunnels in the stump. Giant pothos plants had completely taken over the summit of the stump, unfurling larger and larger leaves.

A bagworm with its protective home of collected debris formed the perfect disguise against the ants. I saw an Asian bullet ant and golden carpenter ants, and even an ant mimicking a spider.

The cutest baby grasshoppers had emerged, feeding on vine leaves and kicking away any ants that stopped to sniff them out. Giant trap-jaw ants were doing home maintenance, and everything seemed normal in the Pantdora lowlands.

Up high in Orchadia, Anitu, a giant grasshopper, was munching on banyan leaves. She’s such a voracious eater. The tree frogs were awake and seemed to sense that something big was happening below, something that would greatly impact them—and they were right.

For when the construction was complete, this is what our Giant Vivarium 3 looked like.

AC Family, behold! Giant Vivarium 3. Even empty, it was majestic and just gorgeous. And talk about huge! Walking up to it was truly breathtaking. This vivarium was definitely a long tank, which would make landscaping it, when the time came, super fun.

It had a top mesh and housing for lighting above. There was a pair of back sliding doors, as well as side mesh doors. The blue pipes were the intake and overflow where water would enter the sump below.

Magnetic covers concealed the sump beneath the main tank. The water would make its way through all the compartments, then end up at this end of the sump, where it would be pumped back up through this pipe and back into the setup.

So, can you guess what biome our Giant Vivarium 3 will be? Well, in case you haven’t yet, this vivarium will be a tank I’ve wanted to do for years. Finally, it has become a reality.

Giant Vivarium 3 will be a Tropical Wetlands Vivarium. It will eventually be filled to the brim with new and exciting life—aquatic, terrestrial, and amphibious.

This vivarium will require a ton of regulating equipment and will stretch all my vivarium-building skills and knowledge to the limit. Though challenging, if we can pull this tropical wetlands vivarium off, it could easily be the most mind-blowing slice of biological habitat ever made on this channel.

But that’s not all! For those wondering if it will also be connected to Pantdora and Orchadia, the answer is yes. It will connect to Pantdora once completed through a cave tunnel vivarium running along the ceiling, bridging the two worlds together. A glass panel above the vivarium could even allow for a bridge to yet another future vivarium on the floor above!

And now, AC Family, the true fun begins. It was time to fill the vivarium with water so I could start the landscaping process. With great joy, I began to fill our Giant Vivarium 3 with water and watched as our empty glass enclosure welcomed its new waters.

Watching the tank fill up with water was an entrancing, beautiful sight. I felt so honored as a lover of nature and creator of natural spaces for ants and other creatures to be here, working on the biggest indoor vivarium build I’ve ever done—my dream tank—with all of you.

I was so grateful at this very moment, as our Giant Vivarium 3 filled up with life-giving water.

But in an instant, the dream quickly transformed into my worst nightmare.

A leak—and not just one, but two! Nooo!

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