[Jh1]

Nice to see someone who likes planted tanks and dartfrog terrariums, I do too!
For me it’s always been more about the terrariums and plants then the frogs, but the frogs are a nice addition.

 

[minorhero]

Nice to see someone who likes planted tanks and dartfrog terrariums, I do too!
For me it’s always been more about the terrariums and plants then the frogs, but the frogs are a nice addition.

Since starting this I have found a few people just keeping plants in their terrariums and I can see the appeal. Its fun to grow species of plants that otherwise would be difficult or impossible to grow as an ordinary houseplant. But I think froggies are also fun And for whatever reason my wife is fully on board for this one too which is super odd for me since she hates fish tanks.

 

[frogmanjared]

I've been planning on D. leucomelas. Theres a reptile shop over an hour away that does carry darts from time to time. I asked about their fine spot leucomelas (very nice price, can get 4 for the the same as 4 standard shipped!) and they are waiting to hear from a breeder, but he expects them soon.

My anubias is trying to hold on, the Christmas moss is staying alive, but who knows!

 

[minorhero]

I've been planning on D. leucomelas. Theres a reptile shop over an hour away that does carry darts from time to time. I asked about their fine spot leucomelas (very nice price, can get 4 for the the same as 4 standard shipped!) and they are waiting to hear from a breeder, but he expects them soon.

My anubias is trying to hold on, the Christmas moss is staying alive, but who knows!

Always nice to have a local breeder/shop! I picked up my froggies yesterday from a well respected local breeder. Its a lot of fun finally having them in the tank. I will post some pictures later by way of an update. I wish I could give you some advice on the anubias but every last leaf withered away on me.

 

[minorhero]

Update!

When reading various threads on suggested advice for new frog owners, one thing that kept coming up was getting your fly production well underway BEFORE the frogs ever arrived. Apparently some folks can struggle with fly production and since this is all the frogs eat, its a good idea to have a handle on it in advance. With this in mind I ordered a culture from online and had it shipped to me.

I also bought one hundred 32oz deli cups with special vented lids. These are for the fly cultures. Some folks wash these and reuse them but given the level of yuckyness after using these things I decided mine would be entirely disposable.

I ended up making my own fly media because.... I wanted to ;P but most folks just use Repashy Superfly and its probably the best off the shelf media out there but its also the most expensive. To keep my fly cultures viable as long as possible I placed them in a plastic bin on top of eggcrate with some diatomaceous earth in the bottom. This cuts down on mite infestations which can take over fly cultures even through a lid.

Here is what that looked like:

I'm happy to say all seems to be working which brings me to a couple of days ago.

Leading up to this I tried to get my hair grass to grow in and carpet but it was just not to be. It was growing alright but it wasn't forming a dense carpet. I decided to add a different plant. I went with Creeping Jenny because it was easy to get, cheap, and I think it would work.

Its been about 2 months since I planted the vivarium and it is time to add some frogs! I decided to buy my frogs from someone local to me which would lessen the stress on the frogs. I happen to live very near Dr. Sean Stewart who is somewhat famous in the froggy world for his work at the National Aquarium In Baltimore. I decided to buy a producing pair of 'True' Sipaliwini frogs 18 months out of water. The reasoning for this was many fold but it ultimately came down to just liking how they looked.

And here are some pictures of the vivarium as it currently looks and two close-ups of one of the frogs.

That pretty much brings me up to current. The frogs are new to the vivarium so they are going to be a bit skittish for the next few weeks. When I can I will take some more pictures. Since these are a producing pair sooner or later I am very likely to have eggs as well

 

[jeffkrol]

Update!



I'm happy to say all seems to be working which brings me to a couple of days ago.

Leading up to this I tried to get my hair grass to grow in and carpet but it was just not to be. It was growing alright but it wasn't forming a dense carpet. I decided to add a different plant. I went with Creeping Jenny because it was easy to get, cheap, and I think it would work.

Its been about 2 months since I planted the vivarium and it is time to add some frogs! I decided to buy my frogs from someone local to me which would lessen the stress on the frogs. I happen to live very near Dr. Sean Stewart who is somewhat famous in the froggy world for his work at the National Aquarium In Baltimore. I decided to buy a producing pair of 'True' Sipaliwini frogs 18 months out of water. The reasoning for this was many fold but it ultimately came down to just liking how they looked.

And here are some pictures of the vivarium as it currently looks and two close-ups of one of the frogs.

That pretty much brings me up to current. The frogs are new to the vivarium so they are going to be a bit skittish for the next few weeks. When I can I will take some more pictures. Since these are a producing pair sooner or later I am very likely to have eggs as well

I know I have a vested interest in this but nevertheless frogs look great..as does the enclosure..
I've cultured too many fruit flies in Genetics class to relive that though.
As to adults, I just remember that they live off beer.. well actually yeast in fermenting "stuff'"..


Other than that.. "looks" easier than an aquarium..

 

[chicken.nublet]

That is gorgeous! I'd really love to keep these guys too but most exotic pets are illegal in my country sigh.

 

[minorhero]

I know I have a vested interest in this but nevertheless frogs look great..as does the enclosure..
I've cultured too many fruit flies in Genetics class to relive that though.
As to adults, I just remember that they live off beer.. well actually yeast in fermenting "stuff'"..


Other than that.. "looks" easier than an aquarium..

Essentially ;P you can grow fruit flies on just about anything including bananas and sugar. There are a silly amount of recipes for media out there plus some very good commercial products.

I have had the vivarium up and running for 2-3 months and the frogs in there for 3 weeks I think. Its definitely a lot easier then an aquarium. Outside of feeding my maintenance is limited to refilling my water reservoir, and wiping down the glass to get rid of bits of leaves and such the frogs track on it. I do this about once every 2 weeks. I did trim a couple of plants once already as well.

That is gorgeous! I'd really love to keep these guys too but most exotic pets are illegal in my country sigh.

No idea about the legalities, I think most countries where these guys could live in the wild if they got free don't want anything to do with them.

And for giggles here is a recent picture of my Biscuit my female out hunting.

 

[platipus]

Update!


And now enters a longish period of little happening. I need for the tank to 'cycle' which basically means the bugs I put in it need to establish and the plants need to grow a bit. Once that is done I can add froggies but that won't be for a minimum of a month and maybe 2. Probably the next thing I will do is begin my culturing of fruit flies. I don't 'need' to do that now but I want to get reasonably good at it before the froggies come which basically means having a few cultures started up, boom, bust, and replaced etc.

Subscribed.

Great journal!!! Makes for a perfect cross-over episode here.

A vivarium/paludarium is in my future somewhere down the road and I've also always thought dart frogs would be neat to have.

 

[minorhero]

Subscribed.

Great journal!!! Makes for a perfect cross-over episode here.

A vivarium/paludarium is in my future somewhere down the road and I've also always thought dart frogs would be neat to have.

Thank you!

I'm kind of hooked on dart frogs at the moment. It's a lot of fun to keep them and frankly so darn easy to grow the plants ;P

 

[chicken.nublet]

No idea about the legalities, I think most countries where these guys could live in the wild if they got free don't want anything to do with them.

Where i'm from the only amphibians and reptiles that are allowed to be kept as pets are red eared sliders, Malayan box turtles and Australian green tree frogs.

Perhaps I'll try setting up a viv for a tree frog in the future.

 

[Cokers]

Just want to chime in here, this was a great read.

 

[minorhero]

Update!

I haven't updated this thread in 2 years!!

I'm doing so now because 1) it's been so darn long, and 2) I will likely be redoing this tank sometime soon. So I wanted to put up a picture of how it looks today.

Since I last posted I have actually redone the tank already, plants have come and gone, and the layout has been changed.

What's the same is the frogs. They are still doing great. They are in the middle of their breeding season currently and I've already had several successful clutches from them this year. Over the previous 2 years I have raised and sold somewhere around 20 frogs. It frankly would have been at least double that but I was having trouble keeping the growout tank warm enough during the winter months so I was losing a lot of froglets shortly after they morphed out and left the water. I wasn't sure what the problem was for a long while. I now have that tank heated and that solved the problem.

Actually I've sold so many frogs that this tank has actually paid off my initial investment and is now profitable. This tank along with my alpine newt tank actually make me a little money which is quite welcome especially considering the money sink that is the aquarium hobby in general

So here is how the tank looks these days:

And here is a close-up of my female, Biscuit:

At sometime in the coming weeks I will go into this tank, remove the frogs, and tear most of the things out. I haven't decided if I will redo the background at the same time or not. If I do, I will need to rehouse the frogs for at least 48 hours. If I leave the background alone, I should be able to get everything back in the tank and have it all planted with new plants within a couple of hours. I'll make another post after the rescaping happens.

 

[Interpolean]

Beautiful! Love to hear that the tank is producing new frogs!

 

[minorhero]

Beautiful! Love to hear that the tank is producing new frogs!

It's quite the little factory actually. When I took it apart yesterday I found 3 different batches of eggs (that means I missed 2 batches when they were laid on leaves in positions I couldn't see - the third batch was the most recent and on the petri dish, where it should be gosh darn it).

Speaking of taking it apart...

Update!

As mentioned in my previous post, it was time to completely redo this tank. I've learned a lot about terrariums since I first built this tank, some of it being dramatically different to the approaches I first employed here.

Since this was going to be a complete redo, I removed the frogs and put them in a temporary tank, then removed all the plants and hardscape. Here is how it looked:

The substrate in this tank is the 'classic' method for making a vivarium. It has ABG mix, charcoal, and window screen separating it from drainage layers. This is how vivariums have been built for decades.

It's also essentially an inferior method to a few others now being adopted by the dart frog communities.

The first method is using filter sponge as substrate. Literally the same stuff we use in our aquariums, but used instead as something to stick plants into. Leaf litter is then added to hide it from view. I decided not to go this way.

The second method is using aquarium substrates. This is what I have done in both my frog grow out tank and my gecko tank. It is both very very simple, and also extremely durable. Instead of having layers, you just fill the whole thing with the same stuff.

In other words, no window screen, no drainage layers.

This is especially easy to get away with in this tank which comes with a sloped bottom and a drain for water removal.

The substrate is a mix of 2 parts Safe-T-Sorb and 1 part Aquasoil type substrate.

Anyway, I'm getting slightly ahead of myself because before I could add substrate I first needed to take all the existing substrate out of the tank. I then grabbed handfuls of the background and pried it off. This background was made using the titebond method (wood pulp and tightbond wood glue mixed together). It definitely made a very durable background, but the pieces of cork bark I used were quite small and did not look very natural. Plus I was never able to get the background to grow much in the way of plants on it. All moss died, and most vines as well.

Once the background was removed I took the whole tank outside and hosed it down and scrubbed it reasonably well.

Then I brought it back in, laid it on it's back and began siliconing large pieces of cork to the back glass. Once the silicone was dry and the cork was firmly in place, I started to stuff the cracks between the cork with re-hydrated sphagnum moss. I forgot to take any pictures of these steps until shortly after I started adding the sphagnum; here is how it looked:

Once all the cracks were stuffed with sphagnum moss I had a background that looked like this:

This is the same type of background that is in my gecko tank. The dart frog forums call this a 'cracked cork mosaic'.

I like it because it is by far the easiest and most natural looking background you can stick in a vivarium. And since everything is a natural material, it 'should' have the best chance of growing plants.

Once the tank was back in position, it was time to add the substrate:

Kind of hard to tell from this picture, but the substrate has a decent slope going towards the back.

Now I could start playing with the hardscape. This time I wanted the hardscape to be mostly about the wood (as opposed to last time where I had a LOT of stone in the tank) to preserve as much space as possible for plant growth and frog room. I was somewhat limited with the wood I had on hand, but even so, I had quite a few options available from that.

After many false starts I came up with this:

The idea being that it would look a little like the stump of a tree.

When The Wife saw it, she was not impressed The work continued.

Eventually I came up with this:

Similar idea but the spiderwood provided a nice platform for the frogs to be able to climb on where as the mopani wood in the front provided a little more hiding room for when the frogs were feeling skittish (and a place to put the egg laying petri dish out of sight).

The Wife wasn't around when I figured this one out so I decided to just go with it

I first tried to add back in the "tiny dancers" plant from the previous tank which is no longer tiny.... In fact, it is now frankly too huge for the tank and I quickly decided to make it into a house plant instead.

The next biggest plant I had on hand was the bromeliad. Once in place I stuffed the lemon button fern I had previously removed from the back corner, back into the back corner (It grew there on it's own as an offshoot of the original plant and I really liked it in that position!). I found some places for the two remaining tillandsia:

The only other plant to make it from the original tank was a single Biophytum sensitivum that I've had in there for more then a year. I keep hoping it will reproduce but so far no joy.

I needed some new plants now that the tiny dancers was not going to be a part of the tank, so I took a ride to Lowes, my favorite place for cheap tropical plants. Seriously, some of the plants I find at Lowes are sold online for 10x the cost for one quarter as nice of a plant.

From Lowes I bought an Alocasia sp (not sure, but it could be Alocasia Lauterbachiana) and a plant that was simply described as "tropical shingling plant" but after some searching online I think is Rhaphidophora hayi. I also picked up some Creeping Jenny while I was there as well.

I planted everything. Then I took some leaves I collected a few years ago during the fall and added boiled them for a few minutes to kill anything that's been making their home in my surplus leaf box, then added the leaf litter to the tank.

By this point I was almost done (for now), here is how it looked:

I was now at a point where I could add the frogs back in and decided to do so.

I lived with the tank for a few hours before deciding I was already unhappy with the Creeping Jenny. It was just too big leafed to be used as groundcover in this tank. I tried Creeping Charlie once before and while it grew, it never did great and was annoying to maintain. The Creeping Jenny is such a similar plant, I decided to not go further with it and pulled it.

I immediately replaced it with a plant I got from a nursery that was not labeled but was instead called 'false baby's tears', which doesn't really corospond to any one particular plant so it could be anything

Meanwhile, I had previously ordered for this tank 2 additional plants that just came in. One is a cutting of a really cool vine called Solanum uleanum. I have very bad luck with cuttings, so that guy is not in the tank at present. It's in an enclosed cup on some sphagnum moss under a grow light. If it roots I will move it into the tank. If it lives it will be a centerpiece plant (it's a big purple vine).

The other plant that came in is begonia ningmingensis which is supposed to stay low growing, which would be a nice change of pace from... well pretty much everything else That plant went right into the tank.

At this point the main things left to add is a bunch of moss, but I won't get that in there for a few days most likely. So I am basically done for now. Here is how it looks:

And frog picture for the joy of frogs:

And that brings me up to current.

 

[ddiomede]

Not only do I now love newts, but I also love dart frogs lol.

Looks amazing! Years ago when dart frogs were more rare and difficult to find, they were considered hard to keep so I never put much thought into trying them out.

I love terrariums and tropical plants so dart frogs will be going onto the list lol.

 

[minorhero]

Not only do I now love newts, but I also love dart frogs lol.

Looks amazing! Years ago when dart frogs were more rare and difficult to find, they were considered hard to keep so I never put much thought into trying them out.

I love terrariums and tropical plants so dart frogs will be going onto the list lol.

Terrariums are sooooooooooo much easier then aquariums. I spend a couple hours a week maintaining my 3 freshwater aquariums. But I spend less then 10 minutes a month maintaining my dart frog tank. The clean up crew in terrariums literally eat poop and mold/fungus. So if you have some springtails and isopods in the tank you literally never need to 'clean' it like you do an aquarium. I wipe down the glass with a paper-towel about once every 1 to 2 months. Depending on what I'm growing, I might trim plants once a month to once every 6 months. I suspect that based on what's in there right now, this collection will be closer to once every 6 months.

The biggest barrier for dart frogs is the need to culture your own flightless fruit flies. That's something you need to do every week. It only takes a few minutes once a week, but a lot of people don't want to 'grow bugs'. Once you ARE culturing fruit flies though... it can be very very easy to end up with multiple frog tanks. I dearly want a second frog tank but have literally nowhere to put it

 

[somewhatshocked]

I dearly want a second frog tank but have literally nowhere to put it

Looks to me like there may be plenty of room above that tank.

 

[minorhero]

Looks to me like there may be plenty of room above that tank.

You know my initial thought was to laugh......

But then...... I started really eyeing the space. I only have about 2 vertical feet above the tank, but I have about 3 feet BELOW the tank...........

If I do ever get a second tank, I want it to be one of these guys.

Same footprint as my current vivarium but 3 feet tall.

 

[somewhatshocked]

You know my initial thought was to laugh......

But then...... I started really eyeing the space. I only have about 2 vertical feet above the tank, but I have about 3 feet BELOW the tank...........

See? It's inevitable! Might as well use the entirety of the vertical space available. Especially since these tanks weigh nothing compared to aquariums filled with water.

A friend in the area there has some orange thumbnails I covet. Finally starting to produce eggs. Only a matter of time until they're successfully producing viable offspring. They don't take up much room at all. Cough, cough.

Seriously, though, it's always nice to have a spare system going even if you don't have frogs in it. Just having isopods with plants is fun on its own. Especially some of those cool ones from Isopod Source.