ugh! i want to make one sooooo bad! any advice on setting up one of my own?
I best advice I can give would be too check out from of the build logs on www.dendroboard.com, you should be able to get a better idea of what you want and there is a gold mine of information there about building these types of set-ups.
Here is my progress from today.
I started out by cutting off some of the great stuff bumps and lumps I did not want. A standard kitchen knife works just fine. Next I covered all the great stuff with 100% black silicone, again this stuff smells and good ventilation is a must. Rubber gloves are your friends as you need to work the silicone into all the nooks in the great stuff. You need to be very careful not to get any silicone onto any driftwood and/or bark your adding as it can be very hard to remove. The goal is to leave no air pockets between the great stuff and the added silicone. Due to the set-up/curing time of silicone I could not get any photo's of this part.
I added some tree fern twigs right on top of the silicone then covered the entire thing with a mix of peat moss/coco fiber. During this part it is very important to pack the mix down to force the mix into the silicone. Focus on any area around driftwood/bark/glass as those are the most likely to have an air pocket that would not allow good adhesion of the mixture.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39807474@N07/9573112370/" title="DSC_0545 by randallsimpson, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7317/9573112370_33e390f9f8.jpg" width="500" height="334" alt="DSC_0545"></a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39807474@N07/9573111926/" title="DSC_0546 by randallsimpson, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3829/9573111926_32ea668cdf.jpg" width="334" height="500" alt="DSC_0546"></a>
Now I need to wait atleast 24 hours, I usually wait 48 hours before removing the excess just to make sure the silicone has fully cured. With smaller projects like this one you can just pick up the tank and shake out the excess but with larger set-ups a shop vac works really well for removing the excess.