I've dreamed of making aquascapes and terrariums as the idea of world-building and recreating a natural landscape seemed extremely satisfying and challenging. The former was quickly put down as that would involve dealing with water conditions, changes and basically adding a layer of maintenance I could do without, so I'm going with the latter... for now.
There's a gentleman who runs a YouTube channel called SerpaDesign, and I've watched many of his videos on creating sealed terrariums and was fascinated by the idea of an environment that would largely be self-sustaining with minimal maintenance. So I'll be following his way of doing it for the first time.
Since this is a net-new project. There are many supplies I don't currently have to get started, so away we ordered on Amazon.
Aquarium gravel and lava rock.
Bigger lava rock
Lump charcoal for the filtration layer.
Will be adding tropical springtails I picked up from someone else.
Hypnum moss and some other moss I'm yet to figure out what it is. Came from the yard though.
This is what I'm trying for a substrate. It's not great on drainage. I mistakenly thought the coco husks I used was coco fiber. I could really use a bag of sphagnum though.
Using a container to create a reservoir underneath as I'm concerned the gravel may not allow for easy evaporation.
Using 1/4" lava rock as a false bottom.
Container goes in the center.
Using bigger rocks where I can, but putting them in the middle to conceal them.
Concealed it all.
Mesh put down to help keep the false bottom segregated.
Charcoal layer.
Substrate added.
This is it. Underwhelming results. It's a start though with only a limited number of species and rock to choose from. The empty jar honestly created a sense of a larger space to work with. Despite using small lava rocks, the space filled up in no time.
Springtails were added later, and on the lid went. We'll let time tell how the flora thrive in the conditinos they're placed in so we know how to better treat them in future builds.
