White's Tank Rebuild (word and picture heavy)

[Rocko]

In an effort to increase the number of vivariums shown on the forum, I decided I'd post some pictures of the maintenance done on my white's tree frog tank as well as comments and observations on things I have done in the past, things I have changed and things I would change if starting from scratch. Before any changes the tank looked like this



Now the tank looks pretty enough in my opinion, although I am by no means as good a landscaper as some people on this site. While pretty though, some issues had begun to arise. The first and most easily noticeable is the pothos which in a matter of a few short months, I think I planted it in October, has grown tremendously and severely reduced my visibility into the tank. Second, the eco earth substrate went seriously sour very quickly, and compacted into almost nothing. Further, due my house maintaining high humidity year round (thanks Florida), I rarely spray down the tank, and I think this led to the death of my frog moss top layer. With all that being said. it was time to make some changes.

First everything was stripped out of the tank, as can be seen here.



You'll notice my great stuff background, access pipe, the hose for the waterfall and the combination of LECA and gravel I use for drainage in to my false bottom. Were I to do this again, I'd never have added the gravel, it's extremely heavy and I am pretty sure may have snapped my egg crate in the false bottom. What you can't see here is the pump to my waterfall, which brings to something else I would change in future tanks, make sure if you add a waterfall to add a means of easily accessing that pump.even surrounding it with coarse sponge filter, that sucker still gets clogged with some form of algae and requires constant plugging and unplugging of the pump to push the algae away and allow for continued flow. Those issues aside, this is the base from which I will build back the rest of the tank.

The first issue I wanted better handle on was waste management, water changes are nice, but the water gets stinky in a week and the mushrooms that often spring up in the tank lead me to believe that more could be done to treat the massive amount of white's waste. For this reason, I added a tropical springtail culture on charcoal to the base along with a few turtle pellets to give them something to eat and grow on.



Next, I covered this layer with ABG mix as constituted by Josh's frogs and replanted section of the pothos. From everything I read, ABG will last longer before souring, will stay aerated instead of compacting, while still holding moisture and allowing drainage.



After each thin layer of ABG, the floor was spritzed with water to add moisture. Next, in order to prevent my white's from looking like a dirty hobo all the time, a floor covering was necessary. For this purpose I used 2 kinds of moss. First, for the "drier" areas, although I plan on more spraying of the tank this time, I added new frog moss.



Second, for the extremely wet areas around the water dish and waterfall, I added "tropical moss" as it is described by Black Jungle. In appearance, it looks almost identical to java moss I use in my aquatic tanks and the two may be interchangeable or the same thing.



With these additions in place the tank looks like this



The pothos is difficult to shape exactly as you may want it to appear, but I have found it does its own thing as soon as it learns where its light and water sources are.

Finally the log climbing areas were returned, and the waterfall zip tied back into place.





Last but not least, the Trevor is returned home.



In a few weeks, I'll post photos as things settle and grow in properly.

I hope this helps other people get some ideas about building a white's tank and some of the pitfalls you can avoid.

[Dog Shrink]

Lol Dirty Hobo... too funny. Ever consider using those hydro balls insted of egg crate for under your false floor? Looking forward to seeing how this progresses

[Rocko]

There are hydroballs in the gravel drainage layer. The major motivation for me with the false bottom was hoping that a larger volume of water would increase the amount of waste to be handled, as well as having a free flowing path for water into the pump. The first issue still exists pretty heavily, and as I said the second is still an annoyance.

[DonLisk]

Very nice and thanks for the great info.