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Journal My First Terrarium

Again nice work!... Very interesting stuff those 3D printers... Placing the lamp or heat source outside could work well... I have one planted bowl (in my Hermetosphere thread) with a led light in it, it gets a little warm to the touch but it still is too warm to be in the bowl, when I turn the light on it looks like steamy windows within half an hour. It actually ain't the LED's that get warm, it's the built-in driver/controller that runs the LED's hogging the most energy en producing heat.

The LED ring picture in my previous post, made with the standard 3.3volt 20mA White light LED. They don't really need a driver. If hooked to a DC 5 volt power supply with the proper resistor per each LED don't get warm at all. And 20 of these in a ring already are a pretty impressive light source. And pretty cheap as well, maybe 10 pennies per LED and 30 pennies for 20 resistors.

In my Hermetospheres, I use a black gravel bottom layer that functions as a water reservoir. I believe it's a tumbled glass pellet, you get in any pet store as goldfish bowl substrate. Then a thin layer of Active carbon, on top of this a piece of fly mesh, caped with a thin layer of Orchid substrate that contains peat and bark chips. The orchid soil is pretty much neutral in fertilizer and perfect for growing mosses and gives a more natural look. The active carbon layer is questionable and probably not really needed, but did it anyway. It works pretty well. I copied it from some terrarium video guy from youtube. 🙂

The other thing, you might already know, is to only use demineralized water to prevent calcium stains etc. Then if fertilizer is required I do use a syringe with a long blunt needle (eBay) to apply it locally without touching the glass. If tap water is used, it will be a pain in the neck to clean it once staining appears.
 
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Many thanks for the tips 🙂 I will try with the ring and see, if it gets too warm I will have to think of an alternative, the PLA can resist eat up to 60C so hopefully it will not get any warmer than that! There are other materials I can use with the new printer I received on Tuesday, so we shall see 😉

The idea was not to really plant anything at substrate level, not even mosses and leave it all in the tower, the tower can then be easily removed for maintenance! so cleaning the inside glass shouldn't be an issue either, but I will avoid using tap water! Still have two 5l bottles filled with distilled water!
 
Some bad news, did a quick test and the wood filament (40% actual wood and the rest plastic) crumbles easily! So need to print the tower again with a different stronger filament! Will have to be in black instead! There goes another 20 hours waiting! lol
 
Looking forward to seeing this complete! Been wanting to branch out into these types of biotopes and terrarium types things myself. Was thinking of trying a Walstad in a cylindrical vase with long stems and just a spotlight over the top.
 
Some good news, the lid I made using Sketchup and 3D printed works a treat 🙂

The three components, the ring light, acrylic disc and the 3D printed shell:
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How it looks when all put together (not glued yet):

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and how it looks on the glass bowl (water in there was to test it):

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I like the way it turned out, the ring light has 3 colour temperatures and 10 levels of dimming, I think max 10w is overkill, reducing to half of it might do and will also keep the temperature down.

So got a new printer in the house as off Tuesday (my missus work), Ultimaker S5 Pro, stunning piece of kit:

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I used it to print the lid enclosure just to test it, make sure everything is working properly, it came with a black filament spool so thats what I am using to test with, I have also started printing out the new Gherkin shell in black:

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Very nice and clean print, impressed with this printer, should be done by this time tomorrow lol
 
Indeed very beautiful!... 😍 Also, the lid is superb. It's a fancy version of a similar design in terracotta I've seen a few months back. A non-glazed but backed terracotta cylinder with a honeycomb motif surface on a waterproof dish. Then fill the cylinder with water and put mosses and plants to the cylinder.

I forgot where I've seen it, was it here?

Anyway, your design is a lot cleaner and leaves a lot more plant options. 💪

I bet you will sell a few if you ever offer them for sale.

One little note on the lid, does/can water droplets run down at the vase outside if it ever collects condensed water? Then printing a second rim to the lid, inside the (neck of the) vase might be required to prevent this?
 
That's a very clean design, looks superb
Indeed very beautiful!... 😍 Also, the lid is superb.
Came out a lot better than I was expecting, the new printer is top quality compared to the old ones, that was my first test with the printer to see if it needed any calibration, out of the box it looks perfect already bonus points! Took me a full weekend to calibrate the old printer lol

Anyway, your design is a lot cleaner and leaves a lot more plant options. 💪
Yeah lets see how it looks with the bun moss, maybe I could have got away with just aquatic mosses! we shall see, this is my first one so it will be a little trial and error.

I bet you will sell a few if you ever offer them for sale.
Yeah that's a hard one, I would have to purchase my own printer in order to start doing something like that. The off test here and there it's not an issue since I put quite a few hours of my own time looking after the printers.

One little note on the lid, does/can water droplets run down at the vase outside if it ever collects condensed water? Then printing a second rim to the lid, inside the (neck of the) vase might be required to prevent this?
The acrylic disk seats flat on the rim and doesn't let any air in/out I tested with water for a few hours and left it off all night with water in the bowl to see and there was no moisture on the light unit, just the bowl walls were condensed.
 
Out of curiosity, I looked at 3D printers a minute ago, and they aren't that expensive at all. I see quite a collection of small printers going for +/-€ 150,- and some seem to have pretty good reviews for small projects. Now you got me thinking. :nailbiting: I think I want one too...

I asked about the lid because I once had this experience with a DIY aquarium lid. And had condensed water running out at some point running down the outside of the tank on the cabinet. (On a cold winter night) But aquarium with a heater etc. is a different story, I guess this vase will not condense that much water. 🙂

If yours ever does, I guess all you have to do is print a smaller ring to place inside the vase neck and glue this to the acrylic disk. 🙂
 
If you are looking for a hobby 3D printer get a Creality Ender printer, they are the best for enthusiasts and have a lot of upgrade options available later (auto bed levelling, etc...), they have various models, I have actually considered purchasing a Ender 5 the standard can print objects 220x220x330mm in size, they also do a plus version that has a volume size of 350x350x400mm.

The one in my previous post (Ultimaker S5 Pro bundle) costs around £10k! 😳😳😳 after testing it for a couple of days, worth every penny specially for a business where multiple people are going to use it, its fully automated, does an auto bed level test before every print, even the filament loading is automated, if it runs out and there is a spool in the station below of the same colour it will automatically load the next one! 😱😱

This is how the Gherkin model is coming along:
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The quality is just insane! Wanted to try this model on this printer anyway to test the intricate printing of details for my missus architectural projects, but I guess I will use this model for myself after its printed 😉
 
Quick one, do you know where I can get one of these in the UK? These guys don't ship to UK, US only 🙁


Wanted something that size, ones I can see in the UK are much bigger and deeper. Cheers
 
should not be to hard to recreate that, could continue the 3d print and custom make the magnets housing
Yeah was thinking about it, just what sort of material that touches the glass to use.

On another note the model has printed and looks awesome 🙂

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How it looks inside the bowl, and possibly the final resting place for the bowl so I can enjoy it while I am working, acts as a nice lamp too!

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Gravel is in there for testing, not sure what I am going to use yet, and the glass still needs a nice clean before setting it up!

Also next to my 30cm cube! 🙂
 
Going to have to make one of your wife's buildings now and have one on some where client facing for them to marvel at
Yeah test building is already printing, going to print same model on old and new to compare 😉
 
So decided to plant it today, was a little worried about using anubias and buces on it, thoughts on those two?

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Halfway there:
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All done and sprayed:
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In it's final position and in the end decided to add a little layer of gravel and toped it with soil, looked better dark.
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Let's see how it does over the next few weeks, still tempted to add some more plants, only one type of fern and a couple of orchids, also some baby tears on the soil!

I have set the light to level 3 (goes from 1-10, 10 being max 10w), should also keep the temp a little lower, how many hours of light will this need per day??
 
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