Working With Glass to Make a Terrarium

Here are some wonderful project submitted by a web visitor (Chris D.) He works with glass to custom make his own terrarium enclosures. He also gives us some tips and hints on how he does this. The first piece is a beautiful flat terrarium that he will be building a cover for. It is quite unique.

Here is some advice from Chris on making your own glass terrariums:

The best advice I can give to anyone in the hobby is look for free things that you can use in your design and don't worry about breaking glass of crashing a few tanks. And always fill your new project in the bath tub the first time! Pay attention to the was commercial tanks are made, they are reinforced on the top and bottom so the glass cant pull apart from the water pressure. If you build your own tank from scratch you need to do this with trim around it nailed onto the stand or some other kind of band around the tank. Most of the materials I use are free from people throwing them out and all I have to pay for is the supplies to put it together. This is a great way to get a high quality set up cause you can spend the money on a really nice light or great pets. Lights can come from old used buildings that are being thrown out. The thrift stores are gold mines cause they have pumps and heaters almost all the time. If people really want a great set up they should get some glass and a few tubes of aquarium silicone, sit down with a pad and paper and draw up what they want. I would get good at propagating common house plants especially vines that grow quickly. It is good to go get a very basic book that talks about how to set up your soil to drain and what kind of water system you need. I think another good idea is to find a low flow canister system that you can keep under your tank. so even if you only have a few gal of water in the tank the canister will keep everything clean. That is want I need to do with my long terrarium because the pump just circulates the water. You can also get a in tank filter that you can use for low water levels. these are great for tanks with only a few inches of water like you see in false bottom tanks. When you are in tank mode look at everything as tank making material and have fun.

A Glass Terrarium The flat piece isn't as much a terrarium yet. I am going to make a glass box to go over the top. The nice thing about this is you can shove large seeds half way down in the rocks on the side and they will grow. There is just enough water there that they will root but not drowned. I have 2 avocado trees growing now one is a few inches and the other is about 3 feet and in a pot now. The thing about these is they are pretty light and under a light they grow really well. I would suggest anyone who has a shallow pool to stick a avocado seed or a mango seed in and see if they can get it to grow. once it is to big for your tank you can start on your next project building a tall tree frog tank around the tree.

The Picture below is an amazing glass window vivarium. Chris says that this vivarium is great for propagating different plants or for growing herbs in the kitchen. It has a top made from 1 gallon glass jars. I think that this vivarium/terrarium makes excellent use of a window.

A Window Terrarium

A cube terrarium

A custom made long terrarium

Will Kalif Notes From Will: Chris has also built a wonderful dual purpose project that is both a terrarium and aquarium all rolled into one. Now that is one great little ecosystem. You can see that project here: the Terrarium-aquarium.