Ventilated Lid

I live in a cape style house, and for this reason the tanks that are upstairs have to be on a lower stand because of the low celings. That leaves little room for a full top opening canopy for my 55 gallon vivarium.

I solved this problem by creating a "half" opening canopy but unfortunetaly creating a fruit fly and frog proof lid was a challenge. I tried plexiglass 3 times, until I made the decision to use glass. I went to my local glass shop and got 2 peices of 1/4" plate glass cut to size, and 1 hole in each for my misting bulkheads.

The glass I had cut was about 2.5" shorter then the actual opening of the vivarium. I left this part for some screen inserts I had built out of window screen. That way I can retain humidity, and still view the inside of my tank with no humidity on the glass.

Alright, here's how I built it!

You're going to want to get your self a replacement window screen from your local hardware store, or even buy a window screen kit. You can ask home depot if they have any extras, or special orders they want to get rid of for cheap.

Tools you'll need are a razor knife, a flathead screwdriver or spline roller, dremel tool or hacksaw.

Start with your windowscreen, make sure it's going to fit the top of your tank.

Next start to peel away the spline from your screen. You can use the razor knife, or screwdriver for this.

Once you have your spline pulled out, the screen will be easy to remove.

Now, pull the aluminum frame out of the corner brackets. You'll have 4 of each peices.

You're going to either want to place the aluminum frame up to the lip on the rim of your tank to get the exact size, or just measure. Now I have this handy vice, it really helps ot hold the aluminum frame, but you can use whatever you have.

Dremel, hack saw, or even a coping saw. Whatever you have that has a fine tool blade.

The cuts wont be perfect, but it's fine as long as it's close. Make sure you cut the 45* correctly because they are going to have to fit into one another agian. Make sure you cut your 45's so they line up with the new ones!

Now you have 4 peices cut and ready to be put together. Should look similar to this.

Connect the smaller side peices to the corner brackets first. It'll be easier this way.

Next, connect your longer peices to finish off the frame reconstruction. A little tap with the end of the screwdriver helps a little.

Now, you can grab that screen that was in the frame before and lay it over the new frame so it overlaps the edges of the frame by atleast an inch. NOTE: At this time, if you feel that the holes in the screen are large enough for fruit flys to escape, you can overlap the screen to make the holes even smaller.

Grab the spline and start to feed it into the groove in a corner. Either use a screwdriver or a handy spline roller. (the spline rollers are about 4 dollars at home depot.)

Make sure you're pushing it in nice and snug.

Now you should have made it all the way around to the begining agian. use your utility knife and cut the extra spline.

Using your knife, cut away the extra window screen. Starting from one corner working your way around.

It'll leave a nice clean finish.

Finished product!

This is the vent with a plastic cabinet handle screwed into place. Make sure you predrill or the aluminum may strip.

Here is a close up of the beveled glass edges. You're going to want to get this done, or you'll be slicing your hands open every time you reach in the tank!

Canopy open; both of the lids in place with the misting bulkheads installed.

90% humidity, yet 0 condensation on the glass. It works perfectly.

Hope this helps you!