So as some folks in the tree frog area know I have had some trouble with a generally uncooperative "juvenile" white's tree frog. In general it was poor at catching food and was perhaps too small to live with its larger counterpart. For a while it was kept in the 2.5 gal travel terrarium and has finally become a much more active eating individual (butterworms, nutritious and delicious means of fattening a whites back up!). In any case, the 2.5 gal tank while useful was really only meant as a temporary fix, so I had another excuse to build a tank and show it to you fine folks. My goal with this tank was to make it easy to deal with, although I can already foresee the headaches in my future.

I started with the 12"*12"*18" exo terra terrarium.


Having previously only dealt with converted fish tanks (see previous build) I was tired of how inaccessible they are to maintenance. Further this model comes with a fancy background for the same price as the zoomed model (yay less to do).

Next I added my water feature. In my previous tanks I have relied on the zoomed waterfall kit, which consisted of a pump to be placed directly into the tank to recirculate the ground water. I can say from experience this set up has driven me nuts, the frequency with which the pump got clogged by one thing or another convinced me not to use this method again. Instead I opted for the exoterra waterfall, a self contained unit recirculating water throughout its structure.


While I no longer had to deal in theory with my previous issues, this piece is far from perfect. There is little room in the back to place the pump and attach the hose. Furthermore the seal on the hose where it connects to the top of structure was virtually inaccessible and when a leak presented itself water would not stay in the system without some careful finagling. Nonetheless, these problems seem to have been solved but buyer beware to others. A final note on anyone considering a waterfall of whatever make to their enclosure. Make sure you can access the pump without a lot of tearing things up or effort. Trust me you'll pull your hair out every time it goes down and you can't get to it.

Next I added the hydroballs to serve as a water table for plants and provide basic humidity



A layer of mesh was added to keep the floating balls and substrate separated.



Then for substrate I chose the easily drained ABG mix provided by Josh's frogs.



Turtle pellets were added as initial food for springtails extracted from my previous tank's colony. Water was added in addition to moisten the substrate and fill the watertable.

Next ground cover was added. I have always preferred the look of moss in my tanks but the dried frog moss never seemed to resurrect properly in my tanks and the tropical moss I use in tanks with larger water features would probably not thrive in this tank as well. Therefore I chose a combination of living irish and scottish moss soil mostly removed and rinsed to remove any chemicals.



Creeping fig was added to cover smaller places and hopefully grow into draping vines as time progresses.

Finally climbing branches were added to give height to living area.



I am using a reptiglo 2.0 lamp for lighting. I have had success with this lamp in my other 2 tanks to allow for plant growth.


And the finished product:



I'll probably add a magnetic ledge at some point for another higher perching point, but other wise I found this to be a generally simple build that hopefully will be considered a success.