I could use my own building as well lol.. The pond the trigs are living in now I made out of pagring mix, painted with 2 coats of 2 part epoxy paint. The whole enclosure was framed with 2X4's and a glass front, the entire bottom of the enclosure was insulated and plywood laid down for the floor. The walls are made from cement board, and the frame of the pond is all plywood. I stapled diamond lathe over the entire pond and put my layer of parging mix (not sure exactly how thick, probably half an inch in the thickest parts) and lastly painted it with 2 coats of paint (as I mentioned already).. Originally I had tried to make the pond just out of plywood and epoxy, which failed big time, so I put a pond liner in for their first winter as a quick fix. Last summer I was able to remove the caimans and keep them in a chicken coop (free of chickens of course) with a couple of heat lamps and a 6 foot waterland tub. The pond took about a week or so to complete after I began the prep work. I've made about 8 ponds using this method now and only one has failed, but I think its because I did it off the ground and didn't make my parging mix thick enough so there was some cracking when I tried to fill it. I have my alligators in an enclosure that is L shaped and measures 8X4, with another 2X4 foot section to complete the L. All of the smaller ponds I've done have glass fronts, and I decided to put the glass in before parging the rest of the pond, which has resulted in a 100% success rate of no leaks around the glass. Unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of these enclosures but I'll take some soon and post them. I'm going to be building a couple more this spring/summer to make better use of some of the space in my reptile room.



Matt

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