Quote Originally Posted by mpmistr View Post
having an 'awesome' planted tank requires CO2, fertilizers, and strong lights. I don't want to blast my frogs with lights and poison them with fertilizers and CO2 gas.. I would obviously have more of a 75% water 25% land paludarium vs the 50/50 or 75/25 land/water ones I've seen. I will add aquatic plants but I'll just keep the kind that suck up nitrates, not for show.
that is absolutely untrue. i have built many "awesome" tanks that used standard shop lights for lighting, no co2 or co2 supplements, and no ferts whatsoever.

while the extra 6" of depth is nice, it's really not as much as you would think when you start building. you can definitely have a nice, 6ft layout and still have a sense of depth. it all depends on how you lay it out. here is my 125 before i needed to take it down.

and here is another of my paludariums which is 18" deep, but has a sense of depth to it. it's a 40b


ultimately, it comes down to what you can fit though. and just a suggestion, have you considered building a riparium, vs a paludarium? the frog would probably love it. here's an example of a riparium that a friend of mine built.
Duff's 2nd Riparium - Page 4

hope that helps