Help Planting live plants.

[Psychotic]

A heater sounds like a good idea. I was going to use a uv light just for the plants. But I do have extra UTH's laying around after changing my snakes to a rack system with flexwatt. The room where the tank is doesn't get much natural light. I had to get a bulb for my aquarium plant by because even though they are low light, they kept dying. They are thriving now. Maybe I can switch between the light and UTH for night and day since these frogs need a little humidity increase at night, but lower temps.

Does this sound like a good idea? Light for day and UTH at night. I've read my frogs only need around 78°F during the day.

[HerpDerp]

If you do a false bottom then the UTH cannot be used on the bottom. The water on the bottom reacting with the heat from the UTH could cause the glass to crack. You would need to make sure it's on the side, away from the water. What I was talking about is a small aquarium heater to put in the water in the false bottom. UTHs tend to not be very reliable with keeping temps so maybe another heat source would be better? Then again if you already some laying around, why not give it a try?

[Psychotic]

One more question for now. I have a exo terra and I was wondering if the water in the false bottom will mess up the foam background that came with it?

[deranged chipmunk]

first off, as far as plants go. Josh's and a few others have excellent selections. i can point you in the right direction if you want to expand your plant inventory. as far as home depot and lowes plants goes, they use a grower names Angel Exotics. they grow really nice quality plants, but beware, some of them will outgrow a viv rather quickly. so research the plants before you buy. fittonia, pilea, peperomia and dracena are all good, easy to care for plants that should stay a decent size. another option is to find a garden center that sells terrarium plants. mini terrariums are all the new rage in suburban america these days and more and more garden centers are starting to cater to that part of the hobby. if you are still stuck, let me know what you are looking for and i can ship you some, just cover my expenses.
as far as heaters are concerned, i am a big fan of aquarium heaters under a false bottom, but that is probably because i am an old aquarium guy and it's all about consistency in that hobby. if you have uth's laying around, by all means, use them. just remember to place the heater on a DRY side of the enclosure. a side where there is no water feature. and keep it about 2" above the false bottom. i'm not a big fan of those ceramic heat emitters due to the humidity that rises from the tank. moisture, heat and electricity bad!!LOL

now, as far as your background, a few options. remove it and build your own, remove it, cut it down to the false bottom height and re-silicone it, or just build the false bottom to mate up with it and it can have a sort of "dug in" look. be creative, go nuts!!

[HerpDerp]

What I ended up doing was cutting the background so that it fit perfectly on top of the false bottom. The backgrounds are textured so trying to fit the false bottom to it without having gaps for substrate to fall through would have been such a headache. I saved the cut background for use in the future... I just haven't decided what use it has!

[deranged chipmunk]

I forgot.....here's an example of what i am talking about when i said terrarium plants. This is my white's tank that i just re-planted using mostly terrarium plants