briiiziii
Active Member
I thought that I would post up a little how to/tutorial-ish on making a pretty extreme and complex waterfall and background.
After a failed attempt last night of making an aztec ruins background (it looked like a shakespearean set! :lol I decided to scratch that, did heaps more research and went shopping this morning.
I bought:
- Water pump $25?
- Polystyrene foam (clark rubber)$30 --- I know you can get it for free but all i got was chunky stuff and I really needed flat sheets so I bit the bullet!
- Liquid nails x 3 $20
- Two buddha statues $40
- Loads of fake plants $30
- Pondtite $19.95
- Mortar Mix 9kg $15.99
All this is for my Reptile One glass enclosure (60L x 60D x 90H)
LET'S START!
- First off, I lined the back wall of the enclosure with a sheet of foam
- Drew around the clips at the top where the mesh lid fits so i dont go over!
- Put my buddhas in the corners and drew where they were going to sit
- Drew where I wanted my waterfall to come from
I left that for another day and started straight away on my waterfall!
I followed the tutorial by Lizard Landscapes, but altered it a little so that I had more of a trickle waterfall and I think I made it a little easier to dismantle and get the water pump out ( I also have a different water pump, mine has a tube that bring the water to the spout, not just one big unit)
Here is the vid if your interested: How to make a waterfall (rainforest theme) - YouTube
*I'm actually not going to go into major detail with the pool of the waterfall and the base that holds it because its almost the exact procedure as the Lizard Landscapes video... I'll just point out what I did differently, or what I found to work better!
- Because I needed my buddhas to fit in at the sides, I didnt take the base as wide around the sides as the LL (lizard landscapes) video, I just kind of tapered them down at the sides instead, as you can see!
- I then started building the back of the waterfall, to go against the background flat, hide the wires and tubing and get a little bit of hight!
- I checked to make sure the pump fit and the tube came out the way i wanted it and i made a little rock coming off the left hand side to cover up the pump (underneath and the right hand side arent covered so waterline can still get through)
- This wall is attached to the base, not the actual pool
- I then made an "L" shape with two sheets of foam (roughly measured to size) for the "lid" to the waterfall that would act as the actuall "trickle area" for the water to run down. This just sits on top of the pool piece, flat - dont glue it down to the base or the pool!
- I then started making the trickle area by laying one angled sheet of foam over the top of the other.
- I then built more deatail onto the waterfall and used a broken pen (its all i could find that was the right size) and indented some little grooves for the water to follow just to be safe - make sure the water can't trickle out the sides of the waterfall.
I then added these two lengths of foam just to disguise the "joint" where the back wall of the waterfall and the waterfall piece itself would 'join'.
- I also tore out a little piece in the back of my pool piece and indented the back of the waterfall piece so that the tube could go down/up, but silly me, this wasnt really necessary as you can see in the pic above there is about a 2cm gap anyway!
After a failed attempt last night of making an aztec ruins background (it looked like a shakespearean set! :lol I decided to scratch that, did heaps more research and went shopping this morning.
I bought:
- Water pump $25?
- Polystyrene foam (clark rubber)$30 --- I know you can get it for free but all i got was chunky stuff and I really needed flat sheets so I bit the bullet!
- Liquid nails x 3 $20
- Two buddha statues $40
- Loads of fake plants $30
- Pondtite $19.95
- Mortar Mix 9kg $15.99
All this is for my Reptile One glass enclosure (60L x 60D x 90H)
LET'S START!
- First off, I lined the back wall of the enclosure with a sheet of foam
- Drew around the clips at the top where the mesh lid fits so i dont go over!
- Put my buddhas in the corners and drew where they were going to sit
- Drew where I wanted my waterfall to come from
I left that for another day and started straight away on my waterfall!
I followed the tutorial by Lizard Landscapes, but altered it a little so that I had more of a trickle waterfall and I think I made it a little easier to dismantle and get the water pump out ( I also have a different water pump, mine has a tube that bring the water to the spout, not just one big unit)
Here is the vid if your interested: How to make a waterfall (rainforest theme) - YouTube
*I'm actually not going to go into major detail with the pool of the waterfall and the base that holds it because its almost the exact procedure as the Lizard Landscapes video... I'll just point out what I did differently, or what I found to work better!
- Because I needed my buddhas to fit in at the sides, I didnt take the base as wide around the sides as the LL (lizard landscapes) video, I just kind of tapered them down at the sides instead, as you can see!
- I then started building the back of the waterfall, to go against the background flat, hide the wires and tubing and get a little bit of hight!
- I checked to make sure the pump fit and the tube came out the way i wanted it and i made a little rock coming off the left hand side to cover up the pump (underneath and the right hand side arent covered so waterline can still get through)
- This wall is attached to the base, not the actual pool
- I then made an "L" shape with two sheets of foam (roughly measured to size) for the "lid" to the waterfall that would act as the actuall "trickle area" for the water to run down. This just sits on top of the pool piece, flat - dont glue it down to the base or the pool!
- I then started making the trickle area by laying one angled sheet of foam over the top of the other.
- I then built more deatail onto the waterfall and used a broken pen (its all i could find that was the right size) and indented some little grooves for the water to follow just to be safe - make sure the water can't trickle out the sides of the waterfall.
I then added these two lengths of foam just to disguise the "joint" where the back wall of the waterfall and the waterfall piece itself would 'join'.
- I also tore out a little piece in the back of my pool piece and indented the back of the waterfall piece so that the tube could go down/up, but silly me, this wasnt really necessary as you can see in the pic above there is about a 2cm gap anyway!
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