Today's vivarium build question....lighting

[AbranV]

Good afternoon everyone,

Welcome to today's edition of "Abran is confused...again and needs some advice"

So here's the story, I rescued a couple PCF tadpoles from certain death by convincing the neighborhood terrors(kids), to give them a fighting chance. Two tadpoles ended up in the pond filter so I brought them indoors to my nursery aquarium to see if they would survive. Now I have two PCF's, Atwater and Elway,that I'm having a blast with.

I've been a lizard guy, and discovered the Rough skinned newts a couple years back and was planning a vivarium to eventually house them OR get a tree or dart frog which is something I've always wanted to do. I've been collecting materials for about a year or so to build the vivarium. I haven't started the build because I wasn't sure on which species I wanted, and was going to build the vivarium to suit the critter.

I told that story basically to let y'all know that I'm not completely clueless, I just didn't expect to adopt the frogs before I was prepared. I feel bad asking for advice daily, but believe me, your help is appreciated.


Back to business.

Lighting for two PCF's in a 10gal. planted vivarium, with a water feature. It will be planted "Oregon natural" with mosses,ferns, and maybe some succulents and air plants.

I want to use either compact fluorescent or LED. I know there are many animal/plant specific bulbs. Is there a huge difference between the PETCO type bulbs and what I can find at Walmart if the wattage and Kelvin output are same?

Also, for my set up, What would be idea for plants and frogs? Specifically, wattage, color(warm, cool etc), Kelvin output, and UV?

Any other suggestions or advice?

Once again, thank you for all of your help!

[DigitalPunk]

For plants you want to be around 6500K. As far as I know the only difference between walmart and Petco is about $30 . You could also try looking on Aquatraders.com. They have some of the best prices for lighting I have found.

Most frogs don't require any special lighting. For the size of your tank you can get away with a smaller wattage bulb because the light won't need to penetrate that far to reach the bottom of the tank.

I don't know a thing about PCFs so I would wait and hope someone who does chimes in. If you go with LED or Florescent bulbs you will need to use something else to heat the tank. The great thing about florescent and LED lights is they won't dry out the air in the tank.