Don't be worried about lining up the holes. As long as you have the motor in the center you can mess the rest up. Also, on the top of the cream cheese lid (where the label is) you might see a circle imprinted. That circle happens to be the right size for the motor. To attache the feet I put holes in the base about an inch apart. Then I bent the top of each of the feet pieces and pushed them through the holes. Make sure you bend the top of the feet at an angle towards the inside of the base. That way you can still close the bottom of the cream cheese container over it.

Water Wiggler : 7 Steps - Instructables Water Wiggler : 7 Steps - Instructables

What I did was to take apart two wire hangers and bend them into the shape I needed. Fortunately they already come premade in a fashion close to what I desired. I've lined up the pieces I took from the first hanger next to the second hanger so you can see where I got everything from. The feet are about four inches high.Water slaters have to get around from pond to pond by being moved on plants, or by birds, or floods. But get around they do, although they will probably take quite a few years to arrive naturally in a new garden pond. There’s nothing to really worry about if you don’t have them, and no special need to introduce them. A few years ago, someone made a device that was to kill mosquito larvae and eggs in bird baths using a form of solar power. It was a wire mesh made of two different kinds of metal. When warm, the mesh was flat, and stayed under the water. When cooled at night, the different thermal expansion characteristics of the two metals caused the mesh to warp into an arch, slowly lifting itself above the water level in the middle of the shallow water. This would lift any mosquito egg rafts and some larvae above the water level, drying them at night.

Wigglies - Species Directory - Freshwater Habitats Trust

The base of the water wiggler is the lid to the cream cheese container. It might be a good at this point in the process to make sure you've bought plenty of bagels. You'll need them so you have somewhere to put all that cream cheese. Maybe invite a friend over to help eat those bagels too!Once you've done this step have fun turning it on and off for a while. I know I did! Play with the rheostat to see how fast and how slow you can get the motor going. You'll notice that by turning the resistance all the way up you can actually stop the motor. You can see how I've wired the device in the picture I've provided. If for some reason yours doesn't work with the same wiring, which would be amazing, just change the wires around. Your most likely problem will be with the rheostat. Notice I only use two of the three leads from that device.

Water Wigglies | Play Visions

Next you'll want to put together the feet for this device. Ideally you'll make this into a tripod. You probably could make a set of four feet for it, but that might make the device more cumbersome. There are only two likely to seen in Britain, and by looking closely at them you can actually tell them apart quite easily: the common water slater ( Asellus aquaticus) has two white spots on its head, whereas the more uncommon, slightly classier, one-spotted water slater ( Asellus meridianus) has only one spot on its head. It’s the common water slater that usually is found in garden ponds: we’ve never seen the one-spotted water slater in a garden pond, though given how little we know about garden ponds it wouldn’t be surprising to see it turn up. The last piece is the wiggler. It's just a piece of the wire hanger that I attached to the motor with generous amounts of glue from the glue gun. I found this to be the hardest part of the project as I'd never really attached anything to a DC motor before. Nice idea, and nice use of the recycle container. As other have noted, you do need to work on a more power efficient system than using a rheostat, though. Your system looks like it'll draw around 100ma, which mans a set of batteries will only last 25 hours.One last thing, and this is critical: The water wiggler is supposed to stand on the three legs in a body of water. I don't show that position very often, but that's how it works. Don't try to float it in the bird bath upside down. It might scare or injure the birds you want bathing in your bath.