Hi and welcome to the forum Adri!

Quote Originally Posted by Adri
Where do I start
That is an excellent question lol. Well for starters you are off on the right foot. Planning, asking question, and more planning are what make building a vivarium a success. The beauty of the tank is in the eye of the beholder. Very few of us 100% like our own tanks. We see the beauty in them, but we also see the glaring flaws and we try to correct those flaws on the next build. I will cover a few points to get the ball ralling

1. Waterfall - Water features should be considered an advanced tool in builds. They very rarely work as intended and often cause heartache and frustration. I do not recommend adding a water feature in tanks simply to make them more intricate and interesting to view.

2. Decide what from you want and then read about them. Then design your tank to suit their needs. Dart frogs in general do not required a pool, pond, water bowl, or water fall. However dart frogs range from terrestrial frogs to ones that will climb and explore every inch your tank has to offer. You will want to keep that in mind when designing your tank. Some frogs do better in groups their whole life while others only do good in groups for the first 12 - 16 months and then would need to be separated (though a properly designed 100g tank might allow them to continue to be housed together.

3. Contrary to what you might think the more cover/hiding options you offer most frogs the more bold and visible they become. They will feel save out in the open knowing they are only a few hops away from a hiding spot if the need should arise.

4. Listen to most of the advice given by the moderation team. Between us we have years and years of experience keeping all types of frogs, building all types of enclosures, and have made many many mistakes that we try to share with the members to keep them from suffering the same failures.

5. The "minimum requirements" for most frogs is 1 frog per 20 gallons of space. I say minimum because it can work but more room with less frogs typically equals happier frogs. So in your 100g tank you could put 10 in there and meet the minimum requirements, but I would say put 5 to 7 frogs in there. You would almost ensure you will see them, but not have so many they are stressing each other out.

$300 is a modest budget, but totally doable. You may end up needing more money for plants, but as you said as time progresses you will slowly have more money to add to the build.

If you want post some of the frogs you are interested in and I (or anyone else that wants to) can chime in on what we know about them and help you narrow your frog list down.

Ask any and all questions, take some time to read through the Vivarium section. We have a lot of build journals over there that walk you through other peoples builds. Bill and I also put together an Vivarium 101 thread that covers some of the more common techniques used.

Paul