Paludarium 2.0 definite glass specs

After checking, evaluating, changing, re-evaluating and changing again, I finally came up with the final design of the glass paludarium. I had already put up preliminary specs in the older blog post “Paludarium 2.0: Ordering glass“, but now specs have changed and are definitive. Bring forth the offers from different paludarium building companies!

Changes in the new design

Some adjustments were made in when finalizing the design for the glass. The most important changes:

1. The water feeds through the rear glass panel have been moved from left to right. This means the waterfall will be positioned at the right instead of the left. This decision was made because the “wet” part of the paludarium is positioned in the right cabinet, so feeding from the left would make little sense;
2. The height of the rear feeds has been raised; originally they were positioned 12cm above the waterline, and have been moved to 17cm above the waterline to allow a larger drop for the waterfall;
3. The filter drain has been moved. Initially it was positioned as a feed through the rear glass, but has been moved to feed through the bottom of the paludarium instead;
4. The upper-right part of the rear panel now features a cut-off edge to allow for cables to enter the top of the paludarium;
5. All feed-throughs (except the 40mm drain pipe) have been upgraded to 20mm. This is apparently the smallest diameter of the available PVC feed-throughs. It should be no issue to find a converter in case I want to use 12/16mm tubing instead of 16/22mm;
6. Some of the measurements have been indicated with a *), meaning these values may vary depending on the vendor’s decision/preference. This goes especially for the size and position of the ventilation strips.



The new drawings

The new drawings look a lot like the old ones. I have removed some measurements that were double in several views to lessen the risk on a fault. First the top view:



Top View of the paludarium. Click the picture for a bigger version.

Not much new here, except for the 20mm feed-through in the bottom for the filter outlet. The front view now looks like this:



Front view of the Paludarium. Click the picture for a larger version.

In the front view you can clearly see the feed-throughs in the rear panel are now positioned to the right. Also, they have moved up 5cm to allow for a larger drop of the waterfall. On the top right of the rear panel, the edge has been removed to allow for feeding-through smaller pipes and wires (like the rain tubes).

Finally, the new side view:



Paludarium sideview. Click on the image for a larger version.

Note the way the water overflows from the main tank to the rear plant-tank, and finally through the pipe into the drain. Also note the measures marked with a *); these give the supplier some flexibility to use their preferred measurements.

The full-blown PDF containing these drawings available HERE.

Next phase: Ask some suppliers of built-to-specs paludariums to price this for me (and to make sure they can deliver this). The (Dutch!) suppliers I am considering are:


– Blue Lagoon. They have a lot of building experience, even an extremely cool online tank designer!
– TerrariumOpMaat.nl (English version). This supplier actually delivered Paludarium 1.0 to me, and I know they deliver quality!
– TerrariumHuis. They have delivered me a paludarium once that preceeded version 1.0. At the time, they only delivered using 4mm glass, but to my understanding they now are more versatile.




I cannot wait to get back their responses so I can get ordering!!!