I tried to make all the hard edges a bit more rounded and tried to gouge some deep grooves into the foam to simulate fissures in the rock.Īfter I cleaned up all the pink foam that had covered most of my house, I was ready to paint. This is the part where you really just need to be creative and make it look how you want it to look. ![]() I used larger toothed files for removing large sections of foam and very fine-toothed files and sand paper for making it look smooth and adding that sandstone look to the foam. I didn’t want the foam to look like a giant pink cake so I started carving down the layers to make them a bit more natural and weathered looking. Once all the layers were glued on top of each other I left them overnight with some weights on top to make sure I got a nice hard seal on the foam layers.Īfter the glue is done drying is when the fun part comes! But a quick word of warning this creates a huge mess so either do it outside, or have a good vacuum ready! I had the best luck with a couple different types of metal files and sand paper. It’s kind of sticky stuff to work with but it holds very tight and doesn’t eat the foam away. Once I was sure that all the pieces would fit on top of each other and fit down in the tank I glued them together with the Liquid Nails for Projects. I cut out the layers with my jigsaw although you could probably use a large utility knife. As you can see by the pictures, I drew out each layer that I wanted to make and made sure they would all fit on top of each other nicely. I decided that layering up the foam like a layer cake would probably be the easiest way to make a hollowed out cave area. I decided to make a foam background as well as a foam cave that would slide down in front of the background and add a 3rd dimension to my tank. The main thing to remember is that you should make 100% sure your measurements are spot-on the first time so that you don’t end up not having enough room in your tank later. I used a twenty-gallon aquarium because it allowed me quite a bit of room to work. Measure the inside of the aquarium or tank that you are going to use. The total cost for this project for me was about $25. I picked up all these supplies at Home Depot and had some of the stuff just lying around my house. I spent a while researching what the natural habitat was for leopard geckos and I decided that I would try to make my habitat resemble the sandstone mountainous region of Pakistan. ![]() My main inspiration for the tank was those Exo-terra and Zoo-Med tanks that have the foam backgrounds and look natural and realistic. Aside from making the tank more eye appealing, I hope that it lessens the stress on the animal by making it feel more at home. I’ve always focused on providing the most natural terrarium that I could. Over the past summer I decided that I wanted to design a better enclosure for my leopard gecko, Yoshi.
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