Plants

[Kurt]

Don,
You need to take a ride out to Black Jungle. Just take Rte 2 all the way out to Turner Falls, take a left at your first set of lights, then bear right at the Cumberland Farms and your there. They have a great green house. Everything I know about plants I learned from Richard.

[DonLisk]

Don,
You need to take a ride out to Black Jungle. Just take Rte 2 all the way out to Turner Falls, take a left at your first set of lights, then bear right at the Cumberland Farms and your there. They have a great green house. Everything I know about plants I learned from Richard.

Hi Kurt, thanks for the reply. I really need to take a road trip there. Its about 3 hours I think so a day trip on a Saturday would be pretty cool.

I need to hit them up for some springtails and hopefully for some extra nozzles for a Exo-Terra Monsoon. I saw they have a ton of plants and they also have some D. Leucomelas and I can definitely use one to two more :-)

[Sugar]

Defoliating plants won't kill them unless you remove around 75% of the foliage. Less than this will encourage lots of growth in the root system. Cutting off the leaves on the tallest parts of most plants should release the lower stems from apical dominance, and should produce lateral growth, or a "bushier" appearance.

Most species can be reproduced by making clippings close to the base, as in the removal of a whole stem, and placed in water. The water should be filtered to limit uptake of heavy metals and chlorine/chloramines, but never distilled because doing so removes essential minerals. Some species can take a few weeks to produce a primary root. I think there are water soluble, organic fertilizers available, but I've always just given my cuttings lots of sunlight and regular water changes and haven't had a problem.

I buy my plants from a local nursery, and they try to grow organically. In spite of this, I still wipe new plants down with clean cloth (no soap) and rinse their root systems. Some people quarantine for 30 days in organic soil before adding new plants of mysterious origin to their vivs, but I haven't actually seen anything conclusive about fertilizers and such eventually being "pushed out" by the plant. Be careful when washing root systems because doing so can damage the root hairs and inhibit the plant from taking in nutrients.

I've also added earthworms and pillbugs as gardeners.

Also, watch out for plants that grow fairly tall. If they get too big, they can burn under lighting. To stunt, or limit plant growth, envelope the root ball in a mesh cover.

The best lighting temperature ranges around 6500K to 6700K, and I prefer fluorescent lights because they don't get as hot.

My tree frogs have shown the most preference for philodendron vines and croton, but I try to stick to edible plants.

~Aja

[DonLisk]

Thats for the great info Aja.
I think I need to into the viv and cut back a few leaves then to give the roots some help to the creeping fig I just put in.

[Kurt]

Remember to call ahead before heading out as Black Jungle does a lot of shows and might not be there.

[DonLisk]

Remember to call ahead before heading out as Black Jungle does a lot of shows and might not be there.

Thanks Kurt, I'm gonna try for this Saturday.
I'll call in advance too.
It will make for a nice road trip for me and my wife.

[clownonfire]

Don, have you worked a bit on your plants after this thread? As your viv must be my favorite one (sorry, everyone else...), I'm curious to see if you made any modifications.

Have you ever used moss too? Or try to attach some on wood? I'll attempt this today while planting the plants to mine.

[DonLisk]

Don, have you worked a bit on your plants after this thread? As your viv must be my favorite one (sorry, everyone else...), I'm curious to see if you made any modifications.

Have you ever used moss too? Or try to attach some on wood? I'll attempt this today while planting the plants to mine.

Hi Eric,
The only thing I've done so far is trim back some of the creeping fig and trim off anything that seemed be dieing off. This helped the plants a lot and most are doing well.
One issue I have is my misting system does not get everywhere it needs to so every few days I have to hand mist areas.

I want to change up and get one to two more Broms but need smaller. If Black Jungle is open today I might attempt the 3 plus hour trip. (one way)

Thanks for the comments too. I really like this viv, but I have to say, I get jealous of all the ones with a water feature.
The dart seems to like his new home too. I find him everywhere so that pretty cool.

[DonLisk]

I haven't tried moss to wood but my first though was to hot glue the pieve of wood and then place the sheet of moss over it. I would only do a line of glue here ad there so the moss can actually be touching the wood with most of the bottom sheet.
Also, thought that using fishing line would be fine since once you know its attached itself you can clip the line and remove it.

[clownonfire]

3-hour trip, huh? Wow, that is dedication my friend. The more I read about misters, the more I'm tempted by the Mist King, because of the amount of nozzles you can potentially add... Although there's a Monsoon on special not too far from me...

We're getting plants today, and the creeping fig is on the menu. I hope I find some...

And there's no need to feel envious about any other viv (although http://www.frogforum.net/members/mikem670.html's is also the bomb). Honestly, yours looks beautiful and well suited for your yellow dart.

[DonLisk]

Don, have you worked a bit on your plants after this thread? As your viv must be my favorite one (sorry, everyone else...), I'm curious to see if you made any modifications.

Have you ever used moss too? Or try to attach some on wood? I'll attempt this today while planting the plants to mine.

Well, the plants in the viv have gone nuts so I just cut some back last night.
The Creeping fig is going across the back of the viv as hoped but has also gone in many other directions.

Hypoestes Polka Dot has grown to the top glass and I cut that way back. I'm hoping it will stay lower and spread mor across the bottom.

The Lemon Button is doing awesome and has covered most of the stump it was planted into. I trimmed some of that back also.

The Cryptanthus is looking great and the pup that was buried in with the larger plants has finally sprouted new growth from the center. (Fig was beginning to grow over it so that was trimmed)
Viv is looking great as are the darts its home too.


Hows the new viv there? Once spring comes I may collect some local moss and try moving some into a viv to see how it takes.