waterfall and stream

[matt palm]

hello, i am going tomorrow to pick up my exo terra mayan kit and my whites will be in thursday but i just ordered my zoo med waterfall kit to make a water fall kit i have intentions of making a stream between the sides if anyone has some ideas or contributions you want to give me go ahead. also i am putting live plants in any i should go for?

[DonLisk]

Water features are always a nice ascetic addition to the tank but you may find it more troublesome than beneficial. Since WTFs will dirty that water on a daily basis, you may have to clean it all to often to keep it running well. If you decide to use one, make sure its accessible for maintenance without having to tear the whole tank apart.

With less aggressive frogs, such as darts and Red Eyed tree Frogs, the water stays cleaner longer, but with WTF that changes. Water with a WTF usually has to be changed daily once they get comfortable and begin soaking nightly. They will drag soil into the water and leave waste nightly in the water and this water shouldn't be left for them to re-soak in the next night.

Hope this helps.

[DonLisk]

Plants: Bromeliads, Pothos, and Snake plants are my suggestions.

Here is a sample of how I did mine for the WTFs. The bottom was done with eggcrate with a drainage pump. Info on that can be found under A Quick False Bottom.

[matt palm]

i thought it would be worth a try since it was only $16 and it comes with pretty much everything for the waterfall

[DonLisk]

You can definately try it and remove if you don't like it.

I have put them so the hose was running water out of the piece of cork flat or even round, and the water flowed down the cork and back into the substrate to collect and go back to the pump down in the drainage layer.
It worked fine but my pump started to humm after a while and was annoying in my bedroom since it was humming louder than the sound of the water running.

No reason not to try your idea or plan and like I said earlier, just make sure you can access it to clean/maintain when needed.

[matt palm]

yeah it should be in monday only thing is though is that im getting the tank tomorrow and the frogs the day after so i wont have it then to set up so im just gonna build it so all i have to do is add the cork bark and the pump and water. trust me as soon as i get it up and running i will have the results posted

[DonLisk]

What are you using for a base layer? Are your making a section where the pump will sit in just water or buried into the base layer?

[NatureLady]

I have this same waterfall! I have it piped to come out of a piece of drift wood. I made my pump a housing box that is covered in a make shift filter, just to keep any possible coco peat that finds it way into the water out of the pump. Mine has been working well for several weeks now. I change the water every other day, my wtf is very small and doesn't make a huge mess with himself yet.

[DonLisk]

I will say, if you use leaf liter on top of the substrate the frogs don't get so dirty and thus not such a mess dragging soil into the water.
I like the Sea Grape leaves for Whites since the leaves are large and last a long time before more needs to be added.

[NatureLady]

I have leaf liter down, I didn't know that sea grape was better! Thanks on that bit of info.

I can absolutely see where the upkeep on a waterfall would horrible. I also understand why most skip it...it took me many many days to get mine 'right'.

[helm96]

I use the TetraFauna Filtered Waterfall. I actually really like that one. Since it has the filters I change the filters once a week and I change the water everyother week. Plus the kids like to congregate on top of it since it has a big flat surface. The bummer part is it takes up a bit of real estate in the botom of the tank, but well worth having clean water for my frogs!

[DonLisk]

I have leaf liter down, I didn't know that sea grape was better! Thanks on that bit of info.

I can absolutely see where the upkeep on a waterfall would horrible. I also understand why most skip it...it took me many many days to get mine 'right'.

I like the Sea grape for its size with larger frogs. For my dart frogs and Red eyed Tree frogs I use some more Live Oak since the live Oak cups and retains some water.

[matt palm]

i decided to not put a waterfall in for now because i simply do not have the money