Hey everyone and welcome to a very special background build! I have been working on this for quite awhile now and am excited to share it with you all. There is really so much that you can do with the techniques that I show in this video, not just for making awesomely realistic looking backgrounds. I will be using techniques like this a lot of future videos. That said this just goes over the basics since so many techniques are presented here. Thanks for watching and I hope that you can use this for your own projects! See the video description for material links.

setting a stiff mesh into the cement will give it extra strength to keep it from cracking as easily. Think of it as miniature rebar like the kind they use in huge concrete structures.

Old video I know, but if anyone is still viewing this... I would highly recommend a Silicon mold material to make the mold itself. Not only will it last almost forever, but you may be able to resell the mold if you don't want it anymore. Sure it's more expensive, but in this hobby, what isn't? lol PS I have made molds for other things, and instead of using concrete, I used Dental Plaster, great times!!!

Is this safe for frogs and fish? Concrete raises the PH of water and leaches chemicals into the water???

don't u have to seal this stuff up for an aquarium? won't the aquarium water not affect the background or will it poison the water of the fishtank?

Soak in vinegar water to speed up balancing the ph.

I'm loving your techniques and designs. Toward the end of this you mentioned that for larger builds, weight of the background could be an issue, especially with thicker (deeper) molds. This might be relieved somewhat if you first spread a thin layer of your concrete mix to establish the surface texture, then fill the rest of the way with a cement mix including a lot of perlite, which is much lighter. Just a suggestion based on experience making hypertufa.

try using concrete fiber as an additive to the cement. This will reinforce the cement and make it less prone to breaking.. You can get in on Amazon reasonably priced.

how did you make a door for the tank you put upright, I'm not very handy with tools, but would like to repurpose my vertical hex-shaped tank into a terrarium

Is there any reason papercrete would be inadvisable? It would be much lighter than concrete.

Every video of yours I watch I become more and more grateful. I don’t have the time or resources to learn this via other media. Plus, you are a great teacher. I look forward to starting my projects and then someday being able to complete them.

I just found you a few days ago when I was looking for terrarium ideas and now I'm watching these videos like a backround, not in a bad way, it is very pleasant how you talk, and this combination of a video and talks makes me so calm, haha

Youve made me decide to do a custom background for my living vivarium! im doing the spray foam part today!

Do more of these! Oh my god I love it! I keep going back and forth of making a background or buying one. I’m not confident enough yet to actually make one yet lol. But watching helps a lot ! Thank you!

Oh man, that looks amazing as usual.

That looks awesome! You're a very good teacher, too. Efficient tutorial.

Wow! You are a true artist with this.

Very informative video. I’ve learned a lot from you man and for that I thank you. You’ve truly inspired me to take this all and make it a new hobby in which I am very passionate about. I spent a month cutting and carving foam sheets and cementing them and then painting them. I tried a few other methods and found the one that turned out best but I enjoyed every minute of doing it.

That's a beautiful background, amazing!

Fantastic tutorial, and loved the background music! Thanks!