The idea
In the beginning there is a dream…
As a friend and lover of exotic animals, you can of course buy a terrarium for your favorite pets. Or an aquarium. Or both. However, many of the most interesting terrarium animals originate from the ever-humid zone of tropical lowland rainforests, where they live on land but are also in direct contact with water.
And as an animal lover, you actually want to keep your animals as naturally as possible! After all, the fascination of animals lies in their specific behavior in their natural environment! But how do you get a “real rainforest” in your living room? Can that work?
This article is part of a series. Here is an overview of all episodes published so far:
☛ A rainforest in the living room: building a paludarium
☛ Building a paludarium, part 2: The base structure
☛ Building a paludarium, part 3: Equipment and interior design
☛ Building a paludarium, part 4: The technology for the rainforest
☛ Building a paludarium, part 5: Creating a jungle
☛ One Year Later: the Paludarium With Casquehead Iguanas
A little spoiler first: it works! And such a rainforest terrarium – called a “paludarium” – is a combination of a terrarium and an integrated aquarium section. This makes a paludarium not only the perfect habitat for your favorite animals, but also an incomparable highlight in any living space from a human perspective:
- An aqua-terrarium offers the best conceivable home for its inhabitants, as its combination of a rainforest terrarium with a real water zone below satisfies their needs in every respect.
- For people, on the other hand, a paludarium is a “living spatial work of art”, a green oasis and a visual magnet that you can never get enough of.
We used to have a “rainforest biotope in the living room” like this. This paludarium was huge and completely planned and built by ourselves:
But who are “we” actually? We are Kathrin and Marc from near Koblenz – and we are absolutely enthusiastic Terrarrians!
If you would like to take a look at our old giant paludarium, you will find a short movie about it here:
After taking a short break from keeping terrariums, we decided that we wanted a rainforest aquarium again. This time, of course, we would build it ourselves so that it would fit in perfectly with our living situation and completely meet our expectations. However, this time we wanted it to be a little smaller than our first, huge paludarium.
And so we got started. It all started with precise planning…
The plan
This time we wanted to keep our rainforest terrarium a little more compact, especially so that it could be transported without having to tear it apart completely in the event of a move.
We quickly realized where the new paludarium should be placed in the living room.
And so, as with all our projects, we started planning with the help of a 3D model. We used a CAD program for this. The advantage of CAD-supported design is that you can run through the entire project visually. This allows you to see the proportions clearly and, above all, optimize them.
It quickly became clear to us that the perfect tank should measure 150 x 70 x 130 cm. As mentioned, transportability was extremely important to us, so we decided to place the paludarium on a base cabinet on wheels. This means that we can simply roll the terrarium to the front door when we move house.
With the finished 3D plan including the dimensions and rough furnishing idea, we went in search of possible partners for the realization. After all, the idea alone is of little use, the challenge lies in the details of implementation!
Fortunately, we were able to find two competent partners for our project who provided us with optimal support in the realization:
- For the custom-made terrarium construction, we found a great partner in Glaskörper Hein, who built the glass body according to our specifications.
- And Econlux GmbH not only provided us with expert advice for the entire technical area, but also perfectly equipped us with lighting and control technology!
First of all, we ordered the glass tank according to our ideas. We then contacted the technical advisor at ECONLUX GmbH by phone to help us put together the perfect technical setup for our swamp terrarium. With the help of the tips from the consultant, who is really experienced in terra, we were able to tailor the technology exactly to our individual paludarium and its planned inhabitants!
But wait: who should move into the new dream area? Our choice fell on these pretty “little” guys:
There will be more information about them in the next installments of our Paludarium series!
First, however, we had to wait for the long-awaited centerpiece of our swamp and aqua-terrarium. But it wasn’t just a matter of waiting. After all, a glass body alone is not enough for us. So we had to design the planned rollable base. And we’ll tell you how we built it in episode 2 of our paludarium construction series…
