 Hey folks, how's it going? I'm back again with another episode of How To Train. In this episode we're going to go over how to make a closed tropical train like this or like the 125 gallon that I have behind me. Although we're going to be making a small window so rendition today, you can use these principles to make any sort of train, whether it be this size, this size, or even this size. Without any delay, let's get started. To begin, you want to consider what type of container you can use. I personally prefer glass containers, but you very well can use plastic if that's what you're playing around or if that's what you want to use. I got all these at thrift stores, craft stores. Actually most of them are thrift stores except for this one and this one actually. But you can surely get some creative pieces at thrift stores or wherever you can get stuff. You can use something as simple as a glass container like this. Just a jar that you've done some olive zippet. You can use a corp top container like this. This is called a flower aquarium. You can use something like that if you want. Just a plastic seal top container like this. Or we're going to use in the demonstration, which is a latch top container. Or even one like this, where the glass lid just sets on top. It really doesn't matter so long as it retains the moisture and looks good. So let's move on. Next we have to make a suitable soil. Here's some that I already had mixed up since I always keep some on hand. I'm going to show you how to mix it of course, you know, what it's composed of, proper proportions and that sort of thing. You know, I've been working on this blend now for about six years and trust me, it works great. So let's make this soil. Alright, so now we're going to mix up our soil based on parts. I'm going to be using this little plastic cup to measure my parts. First, we need some sort of soil base. Here I'm using cocoa fiber, but you could use potting soil or anything of that nature. So long as it doesn't have fertilizers or anything like that in it. This assumes of course that you want to use this soil for animals and that sort of thing. But if you don't care about whether it's safe for not for animals, you can use fertilizers, but I personally don't use it. So let's add our one part of soil. Next, we add two parts of sfagnum moss. Next, we're going to add one part of orchid bark or fine mulch. Next, we're going to add roughly one part of sand. I'm using black sand here, but you can use whatever you can get your hands on. Finally, we're going to add one part carbon or charcoal. Now, for the charcoal, you can either use literally just burnt wood from your fire pit or what I use is old carbon from in my fish tank. I don't like to throw it out as it can definitely be used for stuff. And you know, I have a lot of it, so this is what I just put in there. After you have all of your ingredients in place, mix it up. So after you've thoroughly mixed up your soil, it should look something like this. It drains nice, retains the moisture, and it's safe for all your animals. Provided that you didn't add any sort of thing with fertilizer in it. Now, let's move on to the next step. Next, we're going to make a false bottom for inside of our tree. It serves two very key purposes. One, it prevents water done up from routing roots. Two, it acts as a reservoir, which mimics nature's water cycle. That's why we have a closed container so that when water evaporates, it condensates on a pot, trickles back down and the cycle repeats. As you can see, I have various types of rocks and gravel here. For this demonstration, we're going to be using the black gravel. You could use natural colored stems if that's what you have or really anything. As you can see, I also have riverbed rocks here. I tend not to like to use these as they're more expensive and work better as decoration. You can use various types of meshes on your terrarium. For example, I have weed blocker here. I've used it on a ton of my terrarium, just great success. My only issue with it is that it's not very permeable. That being said, if this is going to be a terrarium that you're going to water frequently, you do not want to use weed blocker. It's because water will tend to sit on the top for a little while and could potentially rock roots. That's why I tend to lean more towards screen like this nowadays. This is just some old screen that is left over from a place in a window. So long as it's not the metal screen, you'll be just fine. The thing that I like about this is it keeps the soil from going down into the rocks. It's more permeable than the weed blocker and it's just this cheap, so you can't go wrong, really. Alright, so now we're actually going to implement our false bottom. We have our gravel and we also have our mesh. Now with your mesh, you really want to cut it a little bit larger than your terrarium. If it's the same size as the interior, that will work just fine. If it's a little bit smaller, you might have success, but it's not guaranteed. So to begin, let's dump our gravel into the terrarium. Depending on the size of your terrarium, this will dictate the depth of your gravel. For this example, I'm doing roughly about a half inch of gravel. I can't give you a perfect calculation if you're unsure as to how deep you should make yours. Just leave a comment below and I'll see if I can help you out. Next, we're going to add our screen and simply just put it in there. And in the best case scenario, you want it to curl over on the top. That's why I said it would be best if it's a little bit larger. So now that we got it in there, you can put a little bit of gravel on top of it to help keep it down. And there you go, you have a false bottom for your terrarium. Now we're going to add our soil to our terrarium. You want it to be roughly double the depth of your false bottom. Give or take, it doesn't have to, but that's a good roll of stone. So you're just going to drop it in. Now you have the soil on your terrarium. We're going to begin planting and decorating it, and that would pretty much be done. All the plants that I have here are cuttings from my main 125 gallon terrarium. I really could use whatever tropical plants that you want. Just keep in mind that the size of your terrarium pretty much dictates the plants that you could have. Everything I have here is low maintenance, small and perfect for a window so terrarium. Here I have anubias nana, which is actually an aquatic plant, but it does great in a terrarium. They grow about four times this size, and they grow on a rhizome. The benefit to that is you could literally cut the rhizome wherever you want and duplicate the plants. So once these grow larger, I could cut them out and have more plants. I actually started out with a single plant maybe like three years ago, and I have about 18 of them now. So they keep growing. I have some true tropical moss here. I'll leave the link in the description as to where I got it. But you could also use java moss, which is also an aquatic plant, but it does very well in terrariums. I have some oak leaf creeping fig, which is basically a type of pikes pumula. The reason I like it for a window-salt terrarium is that it stays this size, but it will just cover the whole bottom of the tank and any sort of driftwood that you have in there. Whereas with pikes pumula, it gets pretty large and it would take up the whole tank really quickly. And I also have some reindeer moss. And other than that, we're going to keep it simple for this build, being that it's a small terrarium. And we don't want to overcrowded it to start with because we want to enjoy it growing in. To decorate this terrarium, I'm going to keep it very simple, being that it's small. And I like to go for a more simple and natural looking design. This is wood that I harvested back from the woods behind my house. If you guys are interested in knowing how to harvest wood and what to look for, I'll definitely make a video on that. And I also just have some stones here. I got little ones and medium sized ones. And other than that, that's all we need. Alright, so now we're going to begin adding everything to our terrarium. Don't be afraid to move stuff around or take it out after you've put it in to ensure that you have a design that you like. To begin, I like to start with the biggest pieces, usually the driftwood. And I already know how I want this to look, but I want to put one big one in the back here. Just go to kind of dig it in. And then I want the little one. Let me get this piece of mulch out of here. And then I want this one right here. Let me just ensure that I got these in here securely. And I dig this out with my finger. So that's what I'm working with. Okay, so I want to put one of the annubiest nanas right in between these. So I'll squeeze my hands in here. Yeah, I like that. And now that I'm looking at this, I definitely don't think I'll put the annubiest nanas in here. I'll put the smaller one in there. And I want to put this one right here. Now that's looking nice. So now I'm going to add the oak leaf creeping fig. I wanted to act as ground coverage, but I also wanted to grow over top of this log. That being said, I'm going to place it in here in a way that it does that. So just set that one in there. And you don't need to bury these into the ground. The root themselves so long as it's nice and humid in there. I'm going to place this one up front here. I will place this one in the back. So you're going to tune the back one in the front. And I'm going to add the moss and then I'll show you guys what I'm looking at from the top. So I want this moss to grow on the log itself. I'm going to put just a little bit actually on it. I'm going to put this one up on the top here. And I want it to grow on this log too. So I put a little bit on there. I'm going to put some crack. And I also want to do a little bit of ground coverage. So I'm just going to break it up and just draw up it wherever it may land. Okay. And then finally, I'm going to add some of this reindeer moss. I don't want to go overboard with this. I'm going to put one in the back here. Do one up front. And then I'll put a big one right here. So that's it from the top. It's looking very nice. We're just going to add the rocks and we'll be totally done here. So I'm just going to add a few rocks here. I'm going to put one in the back. I actually I'll put a couple in the back. Just kind of putting them wherever they may be. Now I'm actually not even going to use any of these big rocks. Now that I see the plants in here. We decorated it. We got our driftwood in there. We got the stunts. All the plants. And I'm going to show you one more final trick here that you might not see elsewhere. Finally, we got some springtails here. These are very good for your terrarium. They'll eat any bad stuff and they will just help jumpstart the decomposition cycle with your tank. They'll eat dead roots of your plants. And they'll just keep it all around healthy. I highly suggest that you invest in some of these, especially if you're having animals in your tanks. They'll help eat the waste. And they'll just keep it very healthy. All that we're going to do is bring our terrarium back over here. Pop the lid open and just pour some of the water in. Yep. I could see them crawling around in there. We got enough for in there. And they'll reproduce. So, uh, yeah, that's pretty much it. All right, one more thing. We want to do a little spritz of the inside here. You don't want to overdo it. Just slightly do it so you don't disturb any of the plants while they're starting to grow in. I always do a little bit extra on the moss. You can clean off your sides from any soil that may have gone on there. That's good. We're totally done. Close it up and find a good spot to put it. I'm going to put it here with some of my orchids, string of pearls, my other terrarium, and my cat die.