Having a hard time deciding on new mantella vivarium, help!

[Lady medusa]

Ok so I want to upgrade my mantella's set up. I was thinking of using a 35 gal hexagon tank. I have a 25gal hex that I would of gone with instead BUT Im never satisfied with how little space i have to use to place plants, hardscape, and drainage. NOW my issue is should i make my hardscape an island so it can be seen in a 360 view or should i have 2 glass panals covered with hardscape was well as the bottom? I have decided im going off the beaten path and sculpting my own hardcapes instead of using only foam and eco earth with driftwood. i will have a water feature of some sort with a shallow pool so i can also place marginal plants such as crytocoryne. I dont want to use any bromiliads i know they are pretty but again i want to go off the beaten path. I will be using ferns, dracaenas, leopard plants, philodenrons(not the orchids), alocasia, frittonias for color, and maybe a creeping ficus or moneywart. Any input is appreciated

[Badger]

I just made a 35 hex for my white's tree frog. See thread below. Hexagon vivarium journal/advice

[Lady medusa]

I had actually seen your set up and good job for your first set up of that kind. But in all honesty i want to try something really different i have done literally 12 enclosures with expanding foam. Several with expanding foam covered with silicone and sand and covered with driftwood/corkbark, silicone, and eco earth. One of my enclosures are also covered with silicone and lava rock. So you can see why i want to do something new and plus a new design. I feel like everyone is doing vivariums very similar to eachother. Have you ever heard of takashi amano? Hes an aquascaper for nature aquariums and id love to take some of the things he teaches for landscape and use it in my vivarium like a nature vivarium

[Badger]

I have not, but good idea. And, wow, that is a lot of backgrounds. Cork bark background? There isn't many options I know of lol.

[Lady medusa]

Have you never seen a cork bark background? Its expensive to use if you get them from petco or petsmart but sometimes you can find good deals on ebay or by some wholesalers. Its a nice lightweight type of oakwood that comes in rolls and large nearly flat pieces. I have two setups w corkbark. One for my pine snake and one for my tropical water lizard species. On the latter setup i managed to make a "tree trunk planter" out of two large pieces of corkbark sealed together with pond foam.
For this one if i was going to use driftwood id love to use something truely oddball and exotic but really the most oddball wood i can find is swahala wood. I have a couple of pieces that look like towers and im debating using those. Im kinda thinking of now making a peninsula and coving only one back glass panel. For most of my hardscape im going to sculpt rocks out of styrofoam and then make rubber molds of them after they are glued together. After molding them im goin to cast them out of a plastic resin so its weatherproof. As far as painting the rocks there is an ecofriendly paint called soy paint and its made out of soy beans. I may clear coat the "rocks" with a polyresin.

[Badger]

I've seen em, but like you said usually expensive. If you like exotic looking wood look for cactus skeletons. They look pretty cool.

[IrishRonin]

So I've never heard of takashi amano but after looking at his work, I had to say thanks for the intro. He does beautiful work. I always stive for an ecosystem in all my aquariums and terrariums so his work speaks volumes to me. On your background- you have done quite a few different types so... I've always wanted to do a cloud forest and a bog but idono if they would work for mantellas. The other thing I always wanted to do and will do soon, i hope, is a buttress root background but I haven't decided on how to construst it yet. I've seen some good ones but they weren't my style so... Let us know what you decide

[BG]

I told you Medusa i had a good feeling about you. Give us those ideas. I cant wait to see some of your tanks.

I had actually seen your set up and good job for your first set up of that kind. But in all honesty i want to try something really different i have done literally 12 enclosures with expanding foam. Several with expanding foam covered with silicone and sand and covered with driftwood/corkbark, silicone, and eco earth. One of my enclosures are also covered with silicone and lava rock. So you can see why i want to do something new and plus a new design. I feel like everyone is doing vivariums very similar to eachother. Have you ever heard of takashi amano? Hes an aquascaper for nature aquariums and id love to take some of the things he teaches for landscape and use it in my vivarium like a nature vivarium

[Lady medusa]

Well i have some styrofoam carved up but i have alot more to carve lol. ITS SO MESSY bUt its worth it. This set up is probably goin to take more effort then what my other set ups have. Today i plan to make the white rack skeleton and see if i want to use my driftwood "towers".

I started an album of my set ups but i have to say most of my setups look way better now lol. Most of those pics are 3-4 years old but i do have updated photos im going to add soon. Speaking of which how do i show my pics of what ive done to this new set up so far?

[Lady medusa]

Well i started to make the white rack skeleton for the vivarium bit i ran into a snag, i ran out of zip ties . So not wanting to have my son out in bad weather, ive started on the styrofoam parts again. Some pieces im starting to put my base coat of paint on. Im starting off with a metallic black to give it a bit of a natural shimmer then im going to move on to the other colors and texture. Im still moving the driftwood around to see where they would make the best sense of positive & negative space as well as a sense of depth. Yesterday i made my first rough sketch of one placement idea and shortened my list of plants. Today i may make another sketch with an alternative placement idea for my hardscape and plants. I will also be doing more styrofoam sculpting yaye! Later today i WILL post pics of what ive been doing in a new album!

[Heatheranne]

I was intrigued so I looked him up and some photos of his work. His tanks are stunning! Beautiful!

If you do guide yours from his I would love to see it!

[Lady medusa]

You guys are very welcome for being introduced to his work! He is extremely inspirational and im suprised no one has tried to use his style for a vivarium. Ive picked one hard tank to try to use his teachings i tell ya! And the type of stone he uses is from japan. so you cant really get them in the states without paying a buttload, ssssooooo i am sculpting my own and that will also help keep the tank from getting superheavy and possibly breaking some glass. I started sculpting some styrofoam yesterday and ill be making more today. I will be making a photo album of my set ups and how i did my setup, well most of em.

Ive seen different ways that people have built buttresses both for vives and aquariums. One way is using pvc as an armature and sculpt over it with a portland cement mixture or grout. However when using this method it does get heavy and you also need to rinse it for quite a while to make sure it doesnt leach any chemicals into the water and soil. Another way depending on how creative u want to be you could sculpt a buttress out of sculpty clay and bake it. That away its already the colors and detail you want. Oooooorrrrr i guess you could try what im doing and sculpt it from styrofoam, make a rubber mold, and make a cast of plastic or resin. The last way i can think of is to again sculpt it of styrofoam, paint it, and seal it. When u go to paint it mix some sand into the paint to add texture.

And for a boggy setup: i have a boggy setup for my black pine snake. Granted with a big snake(4.6ft) he likes to get his tank messy. I dont have a sump set up to his tank but i do have a pvc tube attched to the back of the vivarium so when needed i can drain the water out. I do have a false bottom on the tank with hydroballs and the false bottom is screen and siliconed in. I did have a river running through his tank made of corkbark but as he got big he tore it up so now a 1/4 of the tank is a rocked in pool that drains very slowly due to being covered with peat moss. Infact his substrate is only peat moss and as he wears it down i add more. I have potted elephant ears in his tank to help with the breakdown of his poop. Occasionally i do let his tank dry out for a couple of weeks, sometimes longer. I use aquarium plant bulbs to light his tank.
I hope this helps give you some ideas of what to do with your mantella tank.

[Heatheranne]

I agree with the styrofoam. It will be light and easy to work with.

I have a feeling it's going to be simple gorgeous when it's done. I'm looking forward to seeing it all along the way! Truly great inspiration!

[Heatheranne]

Can't wait to see it!

The styrofoam sure is messy! When I was cutting out rocks for my waterfall I had little foam balls static'd to everything. Including me, lol!

It sounds like it's really coming along.

[Lady medusa]

Soooooooo i have a good portion of my styrofoam rocks sculpted but sadly not painted yet! Hopefully this weekend ill have a good portion of them done. I thought i had the whiterack done yesterday but guess what, the bottom is too wide for what i want! So now i have to trim up the bottom corners so i can have more of a sand bottom with a shallow stream!

Having this sort of delay has really helped me fully plan out and decide what plants i really want to use.
In the water i will have some crytocoryne and some dwarf tiger lotus.
Foreground ill have fittonia( 4 different color types) and leopard plants.
Midground there will be a large philodendron and alocasial.
For background plants ill be using kangaroo paw fern, staghorn(elk horn) fern, and i may throw in a birdsnest fern.