Display Paludarium Build

[purpleturtle89]

hello this is fantastic! can i ask when it had water in it, how do you make the floor? i seen the egg crate can the fish get underneath (if there was any untill the crack) and how do you stop the ground becoming waterlogged... third and final question could you keep darts in it? or would they eventually drown?

[VicSkimmr]

Let me see, I think I took a picture that would explain how I did the land section better...

ah yes, here it is


As you can kind of see, there were PVC supports that held the land portion above the water line, allowing fish to freely swim underneath it. The tank housed both frogs and fish and all were living happily until the crack. As with any water area, dart frogs are in danger of drowning, but they're much better swimmers than they're given credit for. As long as there are places for them to easily climb out I felt comfortable that they weren't in danger.

I don't know that I've seen my imitators on the ground more than a handful of times since I got them.

[purpleturtle89]

Thanks yea I can see a lot better from that angle, and was the land section just the usual expanding foam, silicone trick?.. Thanks for the help, I have created my own viv but did it completely separate with PVC !

[VicSkimmr]

Yeah that's how I kept the dirt where it was supposed to be.

[purpleturtle89]

Last one, could you have not just got a piece of Perspex or glass to fit inside and siliconed it down over the top to solve the crack in your tank?

[VicSkimmr]

yeah that's exactly what I did, but apparently there is another crack as it still leaks if I use the misting system too much. After it cracked the first time I never could have trusted it again with water though. Maybe a couple of inches in the bottom, but not with 50 gallons of it again. That's a lot of pressure on the bottom pane.

Instead I've decided to do a freshwater aquarium separate from the frog tank

[VicSkimmr]

a rare glimpse of the male