Need inspiration

[Eric and Stitch]

So I built a 55 gallon vertical conversion into a Grandfather Clock and it looks great. a lot of learning in my first build. that thread is here.
http://www.frogforum.net/vivarium-te...m-project.html


But now I have 6 RETF instead of just 3, the girlfriend found out about different morphs and wants them all. I don't want to crowd them so I'm going bigger. With that, once I finish my bigger build and move the frogs, my 55 gallon vertical conversion will be for sale.
I will be building the same Grandfather clock Idea, just incorporating lessons learned and increasing from 55 gallons to about 90 gallons.

The back wall will be 48 inches tall by 26 inches wide and the interior will be 17 inches deep. The front will have a 10 in piece of solid glass below the door so I could have up to 10 inches of water/substrate. My girlfriend and I had a lot of trouble with false bottoms, coco bottoms, any substrate we tried, so we just go with flooded aquarium bottom with a bunch of fake plants so that it isnt too deep. frogs can sit on floating leaves to soak and bamboo growing up out of the water. I'm thinking of sticking with the aquarium style bottom and putting enough floating vegetation real or fake to cover the surface and incorporating ghost shrimp or a sucker fish to help keep things clean. An Aquarium with cleaner fish that has a frog terrarium above.

what I want to figure out now, is how to decorate it. i will have at least one "tree trunk" going the height of it to hide hoses and power going down. but should I leave the back glass clear or foam it and try to grow moss on it? I want to stick kind of rain forest like and I'll have a rain system to this will be my all in one home for my frogs and rain chamber. (eggs would be removed and placed in a separate hatching tank if they ever appear)

I'm asking for suggestions and inspiration on how to construct the interior of it. and how to make it more 3 dimensional, my current one is kinda flat to the back wall, not much for the frogs to explore.

drawings, pictures, descriptions of cool ideas you've wanted to try... I am an amateur machinist and carpenter so I can build just about anything you guys dream up and I think is awesome with metals, wood, fiberglass or foam.

Thanks, Tyler

[Eric and Stitch]

My girlfriend want to repticon in Chicago this last June and got a bunch of cork flats and cork rounds from glass box tropicals. She loved that booth. And we decide on using a viquarium by tetra fauna to create a land side water side and provide water filtration. We are thinking of two cork bark tree trunks in the back corners with cork round branches extending into the middle with plants potted in the ends. The back wall between the trunks will be a slate like rock wall made from styrofoam. On that rock wall we will try to grow moss using the moss, blender, buttermilk method.
Questions: has anyone tried that method of painting moss on to a wall in a terrarium setting? I've seen it done on wall in open air, but never confined. Does it work?
Second question: what process do I need to follow to make stones or gravel from outside safe for aquarium use? Instead of paying through the nose for large aquarium stone for the land portion of my viquarium I went to landscaper and got a 5 gallon bucket of large gravel for free.

[deranged chipmunk]

I have done the blender method, except I only used tank water and moss. The buttermilk will cause a rancid smell in the tank (found out the hard way lol)

As far as the stones go, rinse well, then rinse again. Some people say boil them, but I always going that to be overkill. I have used a lot of landscaping stone in my planted tanks.

[Eric and Stitch]

Sooo.... I've been really bad at staying up to date on this build, I only need to finish applying the titebond bark before I Plant it. I ordered my Plants through Josh's Frogs and they showed up today. By tank water for moss, you mean just use the water that comes out of the tank just before I clean it?
My frog Family is now at 8 thanks to Michael Novy. Baloo and Bagheera are enjoying Quarantine while I finish this build so that the frogs aren't crowded. My camera card with pictures ended up in my girlfriends phone, so I probably wont be able to upload older pictures until after Deer season, She's a big hunter.

[deranged chipmunk]

Sorry, tank water, the water from the tank itself. I did it during a water change. Mixed the tank water and the moss in the blender and then paint it on. I never did it in a Viv, but did it during a dry start on planted tanks a few times. It makes attaching moss to some surfaces much easier.

One of my planted tank gurus, Tom Barr, also told me about a method of using the buttermilk method on a large rock, which he then sealed in a plastic bag and then placed it inside a planted tank until the moss took over. Then we was able to retrieve it, rinse it off and placed the moss covered rock in the tank he chose.