Hi y’all! This is my first time ever building a vivarium background, I used aquarium safe silicone as the base layer on the glass, then pond & stone great stuff, followed by another layer of silicone (after carving) and a mix of reptisoil and sphagnum moss over top.
However, I am just now realizing that I rushed the process and was supposed to let the initial silicone layer cure before spraying the foam – which I did not do. Is this going to completely ruin my build or is there a chance it will still stick? If it’s not going to adhere, how long do you think it would take for that to become clear? And is there anything I could do to salvage it if it does fail to stick?
The plan was to move my juvenile crested gecko in here as he is outgrowing his baby tank but now I’m worried it’s going to be unsafe. Please let me know if any of you have made this same mistake and what the outcome was :’) thank you
by osidejess
2 Comments
I’ve been building custom backgrounds for 4+ years. I’ve never used the exact technique you mentioned (I usually silicone a piece of xps foam to the glass and work on there). But I’d say this can absolutely still work, albeit for a relatively short time. My guess is that this will take much longer to cure, maybe 1-2 weeks, maybe more and when it does cure the bond between the foam and the silicone will be sub optimal. hold on to the foam and shake a bit, if it all feels stable and there isn’t any smell you should fine. Probably strong enough for a year or two but eventually the foam will start to detach. For me that would be fine as I always keep upgrading and improving setups, but you have to make that call yourself.
As for removing everything and starting over.. well. It’s going to take a while. You need to rip the foam out piece by piece and then scrape of all the silicone which can be a very tedious process. I’d leave it for now.
I’ve applied expanding foam without letting the silicone dry and it worked very well. Background was very sturdy and never came loose.