Is this terrarium any good?

[Super Chris]

I'm wondering if my terrarium is any good to keep a frog in. I know it's missing a lot of equipment - most notably, a light, a thermometer, and a hydrometer, but there's also nothing living in there right now - at the moment, it's just a rather expensive decoration. I guess mostly, will the water feature work or should I take it out before I put anything in there? The frog I'm considering is an american green tree frog. (And probably not for a while yet, I just wanted to put the terrarium together.) There's still other things that need doing, like changing the water in there; besides having turned a tea color from the tannins in the wood, I didn't find out until after I'd added it that distilled water is bad for amphibians. Fortunately, that can be diluted out, but would dechlorinated/dechloramined tap water be fine? I've heard reports that the minerals in that (especially with the very hard water in my area) will prematurely wear out the water pump. And of course, if the water feature is completely inappropriate, then I guess it will just be removed. Edit: BLEGH, sorry for the ugly post, for whatever reason I can't make line breaks stick.

[Striped marsh]

Water feature should be fine + keeps water from going stagnent, i have had a pump in plain tank water and thats worked for a while now, GTF's should be fine untill they get bigger then u will need bigger tank, really all u need is the equipment and to really get in there and give it a good clean then it should be fine hope this helps

[John]

Unless your tapwater is particularly hard, I wouldn't worry about using it. You won't be able to avoid getting minerals in the water if they ever come in contact with the substrate, so don't fret about it. The only time you need to worry about having mineral-free water is for misting.

Other than that I think you should go for it.

[Super Chris]

So the the driftwood in there appears to be growing mold. I'm guessing that's bad, anyone have any suggestions on how to clean it off or kill it?

[John]

It's harmless to the frogs. It just doesn't look good to us though. All wood will mold in humid terrariums, but for most kinds of terrarium-smart wood the mold will go away after a week or two. Grape wood (which is what's sold in pet stores for reptile terrariums) tends to keep molding over and over again though. What kind of wood do you have in there?

[Sarosaurus]

For the buildup on the pump -- try using a denture cleaner? When you get there, that is.

I had a customer come in who was going to by a new pump for her pond water feature. We couldn't get her the one she needed, so she tried soaking it in denture cleaner overnight. Said it worked awesome and the pump is running.

I'm sure after soaking it over night, you might want to let it run for a while afterwards to remove any denture cleaner residue.

The setup looks awesome. You'll have some happy frogs when you finally add them.