Anyone have any good or bad experiences with it?
I realize this post would have been much better with pics, but the tank is at a shop I work at only a couple days a week, and I am home now

Moderator: Scott Waters
pete wrote:Clay mixes well with long fiber sphagnum as well.
Yeah I think I have posted exactly one pic online, ever (here in FHF). Not my cup of tea.Jimi I know you are not one for pictures but I would love to see an example of what you have created with this stuff.
-Thomas Wilder
Man, with the epoxy I swear you could use a cardboard box as a hull (coat its inside with the epoxy, and make cutouts for ventilation & access ports - the latter you could frame in something rot-proof & easily worked (with small, cheap, easy-to-use power tools) like aluminum, HDPE, PVC, or polycarbonate stock, the former you could just screen over, adhering the screen with the epoxy). You could definitely just use styro coolers or packaging trash as hulls - glue up your bits with the epoxy, or hot glue if you wanted something that sets up quick. And again, coat the inside with the epoxy. But if you had a rigid hull and needed no "bomber" adhesives you could skip the epoxy and just use Drylok. A rigid hull like one of those old TV cabinets, or a recycled chest of drawers or armoire. All these options would save a lot of cutting, sawdust, etc.those kinds of materials, as far as ventilation and separate build space
that is a fine offer, will do, thank you ThomasJimi you could always just email them to me
couldn't agree more Kelly, I've built and renovated or torn down more enclosure boxes and decor than I care to think about...all virtually picture-freesome of the best work we have ever done we have never photographed
mostly I agree with this - my only quibbles or retorts are that:nothing I could create could be better than real rock and wood. Cork bark especially is so diversely formed - from tubes, gnarled stumps to convexes to broad shards. Easy to work, too, with the right collection of rasps and files almost any wood, matter or mineral shapes easy, and I like finessing natural forms for specific spatial, animal purposes
Indeed! My wife and I let nearly the entire three years we spent living and working in Tikal National Park, Guatemala go by before we started photographing things - and then we discovered that the film advance on my camera was no longer fully functional and the lenses for my wife's camera (not interchangeable with mine) were all mildewed on the inside.Jimi wrote:couldn't agree more Kelly, I've built and renovated or torn down more enclosure boxes and decor than I care to think about...all virtually picture-freesome of the best work we have ever done we have never photographed
I am not. Certainly not anything hard copy. There's plenty of stuff (pdfs & webpages, maybe some blogs) online, for free or for sale. Mostly hull templates, with materials and cut lists, etc. I've also gotten some good ideas for approaches and solutions, and also tools and materials, from home renovation forums.maybe then we could put together a multi-author book on this stuff! I'm not personally aware of any existing titles on it, are you?
Indeed. I was telling Thomas (offline) that in my builds I'm way better at achieving environmental control and systems engineering, and tend to fall short on (probably because I'm not hung up on achieving) artistic or final-finish excellence. I build for the animals, not the living room, the delight of visitors, or to make a coffee-table book. I do try to get things "looking nice" but I don't tweak out on it. I'm just a hard-nosed functionalist I guess.Often the term Naturalistic Vivaria is translated as a look or style of enclosure genre, and that the aim is decorative display.
But there are other more compelling levels than what it looks like.
Couldn't agree more. But I wonder if (my interpretation of) your ideal of a closed system might be another flavor of aesthetic exaggeration or fixation? I have tried a number of closed systems for water, and have gotten a good ways down that road, but man - it'd be a lot easier to provision the animals with an open system.But I believe that for many taxa, providing a cultured equation of what is reality for them is the more important potential,
No! On the internet!?!?!? Ha ha, yeah that happens. I need to go back and have a look at that, I vaguely remember it. Sometimes you go way over my head.It was quickly and surprisingly turned into an abstract of aesthetic that wasnt what it was about.
I was thinking more along the lines of a how-to guide - partly meant to emphasize the importance of building for the animals, which virtually all the tutorials I've seen online seem to ignore - than a coffee table book, but whatever...Jimi wrote:... I build for the animals, not the living room, the delight of visitors, or to make a coffee-table book...
You probably wouldn't like what I use for my little geckos' hide boxes, then:Kelly Mc wrote:So many things that are sound and true and functional, are also just inherently lovely.
Hmm, bit of a hair trigger there Gerry. Have a care, please, and I will do same, and we can keep this rapprochement going. My comment wasn't actually about you or your entry into this thread, instead my mind was on how the internet seems to have enabled & catalyzed today's pop culture into a whole bunch of one-upmanship. I see and hear a lot of it with e.g. sport hunters, their wanting to "kill monster bucks" and so on. You also see it with all the "selfies". And you can see it on Dendroboard, and here on FHF, and all over the internet. To me just looks like a lot of bragging, and gross consumerism, and jockeying for social dominance. None of which I understand. Yes, I hold those things in contempt, I disdain them.Jimi wrote:
... I build for the animals, not the living room, the delight of visitors, or to make a coffee-table book...
I was thinking more along the lines of a how-to guide - partly meant to emphasize the importance of building for the animals, which virtually all the tutorials I've seen online seem to ignore - than a coffee table book, but whatever...![]()
That wasn't my intent...didn't you see the guy grinning ear-to-ear, and giving a hearty thumbs-up?Kelly Mc wrote:"You probably wouldnt like what I use for my little geckos hide boxes then.."
Please not this again. Ive got nothing "against plastic" so please dont corral my comments into some Purist Manifesto that I dont entertain, just because Im aware that traction is useful and encouraging for alot of animals to locomote.
Kelly- this is so true.I think every one on this thread for instance, looks at items and materials wherever we go, differently than all the other people that are in the hardware store, or gardening dept while we are picking up a birthday card at walgreens.
Even walking around looking at the ground, or at branches and stones, driveway sand. Doing a double take at discarded cabinets, ceramic pots, yards with magnolia trees.
Funny you should cite that stuff - I'm sitting on a gallon of it. Haven't popped it yet so can't speak much to its working properties, or its performance.Jimi mentioned epoxy, and here is a similar product, but maybe a little easier to work with. I haven't personally used it, but know someone who swears by it, even waterproofing basically a concrete block box to hold fish:
http://pentairaes.com/plumbing-electric ... poxy-paint
Nope, sorry. The old film canisters used to be that way. Those things just aren't around like they used to be. Too bad, they were good for storing all kinds of goodies.Anyone know where to buy small totally opaque plastic containers?
Jimi, do I recall correctly from past discussions that you've also tried the Apoxie Sculpt that I mentioned? If so, how would you say the two products compare? Apoxie Sculpt works much like putty, whereas the stuff you're talking about sounds wetter and stickier (which I reckon would work better in some applications and less well in others). I guess maybe your stuff is equivalent to another product in Aves' Apoxie line, their Apoxie Paste (which I haven't used). They also have one that works like modeling clay, predictably named Apoxie Clay (which I haven't used, either). Besides the texture of Apoxie Sculpt, the reason I went with it rather than the other Aves products is because it's available in a wide variety of base colors - and of course an infinite variety of other colors can be achieved by mixing - so that if one is creative and careful s/he can achieve just the effect s/he desires with little or no painting.Jimi wrote:The stuff I mentioned is sculpting epoxy...
Nope, sorry I have not, your link was the first I've heard of it. I liked the colors immediately.Jimi, do I recall correctly from past discussions that you've also tried the Apoxie Sculpt that I mentioned?
This was one of my motivations or concerns that led to my enthusiasm for naturalistic enclosures, especially ones with low-maintenance or self-cleaning aspects. So for example a scoop-and-stir of de Vosjoli's "bioactive substrate" looks much better to me, than pulling the animal out weekly for a paper change and a chemical wipe-down.Which brings to the table the subject of Cleaning Methods, which with animal husbandry is a diverse subject, and science in itself.
although I don't have any venomous, I very much can relate to the Switch Protocol thing. Its exhausting sometimes Jimi, but I weigh it against the stress (for ME) of mishap and so here I go, undressing in the garage when I come home etc etc etc.Jimi wrote:This was one of my motivations or concerns that led to my enthusiasm for naturalistic enclosures, especially ones with low-maintenance or self-cleaning aspects. So for example a scoop-and-stir of de Vosjoli's "bioactive substrate" looks much better to me, than pulling the animal out weekly for a paper change and a chemical wipe-down.Which brings to the table the subject of Cleaning Methods, which with animal husbandry is a diverse subject, and science in itself.
- partly I just don't like bugging the animals - even with harmless ones I got to the point of not ever really touching them unless necessary for husbandry
- I also got to worry a bit about disrupting their chemosensory environment
- partly it's a result of my lifelong interest in venomous-keeping, and my general approach to risk management in that inherently risky avocation (which includes minimizing all unnecessary close interaction; a habit which is best not limited to venomous, if one has a mixed collection or switches back and forth due to internal or external circumstances)
Anyway, re: subject discomfort - I got to the point (partly as a result of the big, naturalistic vivaria which hog herp-room real estate, and partly again due to the venomous thing which is best done 1 animal per cage!) where I had so few animals I really couldn't discern group treatment effect, from individual variability. I just try to see "is Bobby looking happy, or depressed, or freaked out?" I've got a thing - an aversion - about managing by anecdote, or at least about masquerading anecdote as scientific. But at home, I tend to just fly by the seat of my pants. I figure the human brain is still the world's best supercomputer - I just go with it. While trying to remember we're all subject to the same cognitive biases, you just have to try to be aware and alert to them.
cheers,
Jimi
I first learned of Apoxie Sculpt in the fish-keeping hobby, and Aves indicates in their FAQs that it is (along with their other 2-part "clay" products) safe to use for that purpose. They also describe them as "permanent" and "UV resistant, waterproof, weather proof, and incredibly durable." These products have already been in use for quite some time in zoos and public aquariums, too. But I understand sticking to what you're used to...Jimi wrote:... Kelly brings up something (toxicity) that I recollect being discussed somewhere in all my online research into sculpting materials and coatings. Apparently in some of the modeling/sculpting epoxies, there's something really nasty. The original poster there mentioned looking at the MSDS, page 2, to see if whatever you were looking at had the nasty in it. My description is vague as hell, I know, but I took one look and just decided "Zoopoxy looks great!" because it lacks the nasty. Not knowing Apoxie, and having settled on Zoopoxy, I haven't gone looking. I could probably dig up a link to that discussion.
Same thing with Repashy Super Hatch incubation medium. It's great in that role, but it's really just repackaged stuff that is primarily/originally used as the "dirt" on baseball fields--and we herp folks pay something like 20 times the bulk rate!Kelly Mc wrote:I know I have picked on Coco fiber a lot, but its a great example of successful marketing, there is a huge audience of reptile keeping people, whom have been led to believe that Coco Fiber is a substrate specifically conceived and created for the healthy, happy husbandry of herps, when the fact is it is nothing but a clever bulk appropriation off of another industry. Just like Corn Cob Bedding was in the 70's & 80s, and ground Walnut Shell was in the 90s. All marketing.