FBT Vivarium Preparations

[synikalspinstress]

Ooo~, thank you! I might give that a try. Or I'll chicken out and, like, hide it with a plant, or some bark. XD Grey sounds like it'd be the one that'd blend in most easily, although black could work with the coloring my stand.

I'm planning on using some window screen as the barrier.

[synikalspinstress]

Alright, went out shopping today and could not find egg crate. Like, I spent two hours hunting for it and nope. They had other light diffusing things, but, not what I need. So. What's an alternative I could use for it? Or, gosh, should I just skip the egg crate and go with two inches of gravel?

[daybr4ke]

Honestly, I've never seen platic egg crate ANYWHERE. I've only ever seen it online. Before looking into false bottoms some time ago I didn't even know it existed or what it was. Maybe someone else will know where to find it. I worry about the gravel, though, as it is very heavy. It'll probably be fine, but that thin glass makes me worry. LECA/hydroballs are another option, but is probably too expensive and can also be difficult to find in retail, unless you have a good reptile/vivarium supply in your area. Personally I made a small leap of faith and bought ODLA clay pellets from IKEA, as they seem to be normal clay with no additives, and they wouldn't be in direct contact with frogs anyway. They are around 6$ for 4.5 quarts. I found a post on Dendroboard by someone stating they used it, so I decided to try it, but I feel it would be irresponsible of me to recommend them before having used them for a while.

[synikalspinstress]

Thank you! I might--might--have found a store that actually has the egg crates, and I'm gonna head out in a few minutes to see, but I'm not holding my breath. If I don't find it, I'll probably go with the hydroballs... if I can find those.

Ugh. I just wanna get started building this thing! But, without the false bottom, all I can do is move stuff around and imagine it.

[daybr4ke]

I hope you find the egg crate! Good luck!
Edit: Did some googling and found a useful thread on another site.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/wh...ggcrate.98495/
If you don't find it where you're going to look maybe this will help. If not, there's always hydroballs!

[synikalspinstress]

Oh my gosh, I found the egg crate.

Somehow--somehow--I managed to search our Lowes for two hours and missed them. Goodness. Seriously, if anyone is reading this in the future, or lurking, or whatever--the egg crate stuff is never in the lighting section, which makes no sense. You'll absolutely find it in the wood section, by the doors and windows and planks. What the heck. Also, handily, Lowes has a map of each store they have online, and it'll show you right where the thing you want is.

It literally took me five minutes to get into the store, find the egg crate, and leave. What?

So now, finally, I can start building my vivarium. Bwah.

[synikalspinstress]

Hello, me again!

My vivarium is practically complete. Plants in, substrate in, gravel in. There's been, ah, a couple bumps along the way: making a false bottom with a huge opening like I did was probably not the smartest thing for a first-time effort, but, it's mostly working. Mostly. So, here's my problem.

Between the large plastic tub and the wall of egg crate that's holding the substrate back, there's about a half-inch gap that goes down to the false bottom. Filling it with substrate isn't possible, because I have to remove the tub clean and refill it, and it'll all just fall into the open area of the false bottom. I thought about putting cork over the top of it, but, cork is a bit curvy, and has instead made some neat caves that lead to the gaps. (It looks nice, though, so, there's that.) Is there something else I could use that would be easy to replace each time I remove the water tub? Pond filter? More egg crate wedges?

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[daybr4ke]

Hey, glad to hear things are going well! I'm slightly confused, though and I'd love it if you could post a picture or two if your setup. The reason I'm a little confused is that you mentioned space between the false bottom and the egg crate. Egg crate is actually unnecessary if you use gravel to make a drainage layer, since you just put in 2-3inches of the drainage material(I saw you asked about this in a previous post and I replied to the thread but got carried away while typing and didn't answer the question. Sorry about that!) then use a substrate divider(like fine window screen) between it and the substrate to prevent the dirt from being washed down and siphoned out. I had intended to post this when you were mixing your soil up and getting ready to add your plants, but I guess now it is late. I should have included this earlier.
A few things need to be done with plants before you add them to you vivarium since frogs will be living in it. The plants need to be bathed/rinsed, this is done in water or in a bleach-water solution. This removed old soil that often inludes things that are undesirable like perlite, to kill and remove any pests on the plants and to remove any chemicals that may be on the plants.
http://www.neherpetoculture.com/plan...singprocedures
A lot of useful information such as the bleach-water ratio are included.
I don't know exactly what the effects of the gap are, but I feel as if it may make the soil dry faster. I don't know if it's a problem, so maybe it won't matter at all lol

[synikalspinstress]

Aaah, sorry for the confusion! It made sense in my head, but, without seeing the tank I understand why "omg there's a gap" could be hard to understand. So, I took pictures.



So, this is my tank! That big plastic tub is their water dish (currently empty, and will have some fake plants and the like going into it, as well as a slope to make exiting easier). And, maybe, you can see the gap I'm talking about, between the water dish and the egg crate wall holding the substrate back.





Here are the close-ups of it. The cork doesn't lie flat on top of it, unfortunately, so the toads could get under there and get stuck in that crevice. I've been thinking about adding, like, a bit of egg crate in there, or maybe some type of foam filter. Anything put in there will tumble out when I remove the water tub, so, it can't be more substrate, or gravel. Larger rocks might work, because I'd at least be able to put the rocks back when the tub goes back in.

[daybr4ke]

I've never used a ceramic heater. I'd bet on around 50-60w, unless someone else has a better idea. I figure it's a safe wattage, but with a thermostat it should be safe even if it's a bit much, anyway.

[synikalspinstress]

I ordered a 60w CHE with a thermostat and lamp. My tank is at about 61*F today, so, figured it was for the best. Poor dudes. It'll be here Tuesday.

Now I just have to figure out when these guys will want to start eating. Probably when the temperature increases.

[monster]

From the pictures you put up if you didn't get the thermostat the 60 would have more then likely been to much judging by the distance from the lid to the ground, but with a thermostat you should be ok. And one more thing, make sure the dome you got has a ceramic fixture for the bulb to screw into and not plastic or something else. Ceramic heat emitters get pretty hot and it will melt plastic. I suggest you get a stand in the future that you can suspend the dome from, with it sitting right on top of the metal lid it is going to make the lid around the dome pretty hot and the dome itself will be hot so you don't want to have to pick it up every time you want to get inside. Wouldn't want you to burn yourself.

[synikalspinstress]

I... never considered how hot the lamp would get. Luckily, my lamps (both) have ceramic fixtures, so I'm good there. But a stand is most definitely in my future. Me and hot things do not get along at all.

[synikalspinstress]

Instead of making a new thread, I figured I'd just use this one instead. Because it's basically the same stuff as before. Except this time I'm gonna do it right!

SO.

I'm getting rid of my old tank and getting something that's water-proof. Whether that's a Sterilite/Rubbermaid bin or an actual aquarium (cuz Petco's still got a dollar-per-gallon sale going) , it doesn't matter. I hate my tank, my dudes hate the tank, the crickets hate the tank. We're all done with it. We're gonna reverse the whole thing.

And that's the question, I guess. Could I literally reverse it? Fill up what is currently my water pond with substrate/false bottom/plant life/springtails, and have the rest be water? I see people using, like, glass or plexiglass separators to divide between land and water, and I was just wondering if there was a reason people didn't do this? Aesthetics? Because, honestly, anything is a step up from seeing as much eggcrate as I do.

Any tips on having a mostly-water paludarium? And, in the case I do get a plastic bin instead of an aquarium, any suggestions on that? Me and my little dudes appreciate it.