38 Gal Paludarium

[megamax42]

Thanks for the comments!

The fogger is actually really simple, it's just an ultrasonic humidifier with the outlet reduced to 1/2" hose. The reduction causes the vapor to concentrate and become a little more visible. The adapter pieces all fit snugly or screw in so fortunately nothing is glued.

Some crabs would be awesome! Perhaps I'll have to make a tank one day for them.

[megamax42]

The increased humidity from the fogger has caused the terrestrial vegetation to grow a beautiful bright green, it's insane the difference it made, especially since I usually only turn it on 15-30 minutes a day on it's lowest setting.

A new dilemma has also come up. The snails have been populating like crazy, I feel like I see 10 new snails every day. This has led me to come to two possible solutions:

1. The 5 gallon shrimp tank had a snail infestation recently as well, except a much smaller species. I dealt with those by using assassin snails. They're still at work but it seems the battle is being won. So one solution could be introducing quite a few assassins to the tank.

2. The second solution changes my future plans a lot more. It's based off the fact that the snails love to climb out of the water and explore the various pools of the water feature. Sometimes the water is flowing over the edges of the waterfall (and they can only get in to them if it's overflowing) and sometimes the outside is completely dry, meaning the snails get stuck in the pools. Doesn't seem to bother them though, I've seen a couple generations mature in the pool at the very top before the outlet gets clogged up and the water starts overflowing. Once that happens most usually migrate back down into the water portion. The lower waterfall pool is usually overflowing constantly so they always have access to that one, as well as the calm pool next to the waterfalls. Anyways, my idea is to introduce pea puffers to the tank. Then hopefully they have a sustaining supply of snails from the pools above. The problem with this approach is I don't think a pea puffer would get along well with the fire belly toad, and I know it would decimate the RCS. I could live without the RCS, but I definitely want a couple amphibians, as that's what I built this tank for.


I would love to hear your opinions

[Robotponys]

Wow amazing! It looks crazy good. that fogger is so simple yet effective. Great job on this!

I want to do this, but with a turtle and maybe green anoles/mourning geckos. Bad idea?

Pea puffers...I wouldn't do it personally. It would have to become a puffer only water section, unless you get exceptionally docile ones. Then it may look pretty inactive since they're 1 inch fish and you can't keep too many together. But it's totally up to you.

[HostileGardens]

Originally Posted by megamax42

The increased humidity from the fogger has caused the terrestrial vegetation to grow a beautiful bright green, it's insane the difference it made, especially since I usually only turn it on 15-30 minutes a day on it's lowest setting.

A new dilemma has also come up. The snails have been populating like crazy, I feel like I see 10 new snails every day. This has led me to come to two possible solutions:

1. The 5 gallon shrimp tank had a snail infestation recently as well, except a much smaller species. I dealt with those by using assassin snails. They're still at work but it seems the battle is being won. So one solution could be introducing quite a few assassins to the tank.

2. The second solution changes my future plans a lot more. It's based off the fact that the snails love to climb out of the water and explore the various pools of the water feature. Sometimes the water is flowing over the edges of the waterfall (and they can only get in to them if it's overflowing) and sometimes the outside is completely dry, meaning the snails get stuck in the pools. Doesn't seem to bother them though, I've seen a couple generations mature in the pool at the very top before the outlet gets clogged up and the water starts overflowing. Once that happens most usually migrate back down into the water portion. The lower waterfall pool is usually overflowing constantly so they always have access to that one, as well as the calm pool next to the waterfalls. Anyways, my idea is to introduce pea puffers to the tank. Then hopefully they have a sustaining supply of snails from the pools above. The problem with this approach is I don't think a pea puffer would get along well with the fire belly toad, and I know it would decimate the RCS. I could live without the RCS, but I definitely want a couple amphibians, as that's what I built this tank for.


I would love to hear your opinions

I had a guy at my LFS tell me to put either a piece of cucumber or a piece of celery, don't remember which, in the water and the snails would migrate to it and you can remove them easier that way. I don't know if it works i didn't try it yet

[MABJ]

Wow... This is pretty creative and inspiring!

If I missed it somewhere, I really apologize, but are you planning on having any other fauna in the water itself?

On the snails. I know everybody dislikes them, but they don't harm a thing. They even look cool. I mean how cool is it you have generations of something living breeding and dying in your pools lol. They aren't doing too much harm :/


MABJ's iDevice used for this message :p

[megamax42]

Thanks again to everyone for the nice comments!

Originally Posted by Robotponys

Wow amazing! It looks crazy good. that fogger is so simple yet effective. Great job on this!

I want to do this, but with a turtle and maybe green anoles/mourning geckos. Bad idea?

Pea puffers...I wouldn't do it personally. It would have to become a puffer only water section, unless you get exceptionally docile ones. Then it may look pretty inactive since they're 1 inch fish and you can't keep too many together. But it's totally up to you.

Hmm, you could possibly do that setup if it was a big enough tank, and you had enough levels so the anole could live in the top half and the turtle in the bottom half, hopefully never interacting. But the research I did in planning this tank seemed to always disapprove of multi-species tanks, so I think it would be very risky.

Originally Posted by HostileGardens

I had a guy at my LFS tell me to put either a piece of cucumber or a piece of celery, don't remember which, in the water and the snails would migrate to it and you can remove them easier that way. I don't know if it works i didn't try it yet

I'll definitely give it a try one of these days.
In the meantime for the small snails I just crush a couple on the glass, then watch the RCS eat em. Free food! lol

Originally Posted by MABJ

Wow... This is pretty creative and inspiring!

If I missed it somewhere, I really apologize, but are you planning on having any other fauna in the water itself?

On the snails. I know everybody dislikes them, but they don't harm a thing. They even look cool. I mean how cool is it you have generations of something living breeding and dying in your pools lol. They aren't doing too much harm :/


MABJ's iDevice used for this message :p

I would definitely like to have one more species of fauna in the water portion, I've been pretty stuck on what to use though. I would love to hear your opinions on it!

You're definitely right about the snails, and I decided to go the assassin snail route, which won't completely eradicate them, but at least keep the population in check.

[megamax42]

My next dilemma is what plant to use for the water feature

Preferably something dark green, that will hang over the edges of the basins. I sorta want green hair algae, except minus the algae part. This way the water has a path to follow, as it sometimes tries to drip into the soil if the flow is too strong.

[megamax42]

I'm also trying to work on proper ventilation now. My plan is to have the system re-circulating the air as a closed system most of the day, then at 'sunrise' and 'sunset' have it evacuate the old air and bring in fresh air.

Would this be an acceptable route to achieve air movement while retaining humidity?

Also my plan is to build it using computer fans, is there any system you would recommend over a computer fan?

[megamax42]

Found a very large shrimp in the little pool next to the waterfall the other day. I still have no idea how he got up there but he was just chilling in the baby tears. Then I moved the light to take a picture and he darted under the ledge, so this was the best picture I could get:






The vine has been doing incredibly well. I should probably get in there and do some trimming soon.

[megamax42]

Here's some pics to illustrate how much the sealer has changed color as it gets grown over with random life. Also it appears the shrimp are now breeding in full force.

[megamax42]

Earlier today I bought an Arduino board for the paludarium, a mega 2560 just like the one I have on the 5 gallon shrimp tank. My first goal is to implement a ventilation system that is switchable between an open and closed system, with some temperature/humidity sensors integrated into it. There's also an inexpensive flow sensor I've had my eye on for some time. Rather pointless for the 5 gallon, but with how the water feature works in the paludarium I wouldn't mind getting some feedback on the flow rate. Maybe programming a couple small LEDs to give me a green light for good flow, yellow for adequate, and red for poor flow; at least until I can get a LCD screen for this tank as well.

[megamax42]

[megamax42]

Gonna start breeding crickets in preparation for the toads, however I wanted to run something by you guys first.

My guess is that the local pet stores probably remove the female crickets once they're old enough to tell apart. Is it possible that the pinhead-sized crickets are young enough to have females? Or is it noticeable right away?

[toksyn]

I've never not had a mix - I doubt that anyone takes the time to sort crickets by sex. They smell too bad for starters, and I think most standard pet shop employees (at least here ) just really can't be bothered.

Originally Posted by megamax42

Gonna start breeding crickets in preparation for the toads, however I wanted to run something by you guys first.

My guess is that the local pet stores probably remove the female crickets once they're old enough to tell apart. Is it possible that the pinhead-sized crickets are young enough to have females? Or is it noticeable right away?

[jmeister]

Originally Posted by megamax42

The vine has been doing incredibly well. I should probably get in there and

I might have missed it somewhere but did you figure out what that vine was?