BioVivara

The scientific community has made it clear that captive animals thrive best in environments that recreate the animal’s natural habitat. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity in our hobby. We have some of the most complex environmental conditions to recreate while making the enclosure look as natural as possible. And, so far, we do so with very few tools developed specifically for our unique needs.
It has been encouraging to see the advances made in many aspects of our hobby, such as more feeder insects, better supplements, more efficient lighting, misting systems, controllers, backgrounds and substrates. However, the actual enclosures that house our animals have not received the technological advancement necessary to give us the control we need to create the ideal environment for our animals. Our community members typically resort to modifying glass aquariums or retrofitting terrariums originally developed for reptiles.
Our driving purpose over the past several years has been to develop comprehensive understanding of what dart frogs need and how to best meet those needs. Our conclusion isn’t that we need to think either inside- or outside-the-box. Instead, we need to re-imagine the box. We deconstructed the vivarium, breaking down every system needed for best practices in dart frog husbandry. Then, we reconstructed it, incorporating technology and methods from other fields, to create the ideal nature emulating vivarium.
Next: The Deconstruction