[MikeyP]

Hello everyone,

I am starting the building process of a 220 gallon glass tank 6'x2'x30''s. I'm building a custom stand and canopy for it as well.

We have 2 Tetra Viquarium Waters Edge kits that we are going to use. Both with a little modding will make the 24''s we need to fill the front to back portions of the tank. That will take up approx 2 foot of land and the rest of the tank 4' will be water which will be approx 9'' deep. We've done one with a 180 in the past and loved it.

Also, in the water section I have a cascading creek also made by Tetra I believe. We are also going to have drift wood and a selection of live and fake plants/ trees.

Were also going to be adding a rain maker.

We plan on having, fish, frogs, turtles, newts, crabs etc in there for the live stock. We also want to have some lilies and bamboo plants as well as other misc live plants, non of which should need high intensity lighting.

Questions I have are:

Ive seen the talk about foggers but not sure which ones are good and where to get them from, so Id like that info please.

Also, lighting. I have a friend that is selling LED lighting that he used for his 220 saltwater reef tank, consists of 10k and actinic (blue) led lights as well as some T5s that are the same K values. He will sell them to me for a really good price. This setup even though it was saltwater was able to grow acros (A type of hard coral) on the very bottom of his 30'' tank so I know those leds can penetrate very well. But I'm concerned about the K values being too high. I could buy new bulbs and change them out I suppose but not to sure about LEDs specs as I am new to the LED lights for tanks.

Anyways, Ill post some pics of the progress so far. The 1st pic is my reef tank I built back in 06, I built that stand and canopy as well for that and loved it so much I am going to do this stand and canopy the same maybe a tad different.

Will have plenty of questions I'm sure!

Thanks everyone and The Planted Tank.

/\ Ran out of tongue and groove boards! dang!

 

[rbarn]

Ok, I have done some big dart frog tanks.

1. I would recommend against having a water feature. They are more trouble than they are worth. Do a terrarium. trust me you will be happier. Everything tends to stay too wet with standing water and you will have mold headaches.

2. Pick one kind of animal and stick with it. Mixing and matching does not work. I highly recommend dart frogs. If you go with dart frogs pick one sub-species and do not mix and match. Cobalt Tinc.'s are very cool, get big and very active.

4-6 of these in a 220 terrarium would be sweet.

3. In a terrarium the trick is getting ventilation balanced out. you want to keep it humid, but not stagnant or molds will start growing.

4. Automatic terrarium misting system is a must have. Mist king makes a nice system and there are others.

5. I would recommend some ecoxotic freshwater LED modules, but sometimes the heat from a set of T5's can help keep your tank temps up.

6. For foggers I found just the simple humidifiers that put out a fog work good. You can put them under the tank with PVC pipe sticking in it, run it up through the floor of the tank with a bulk head fitting and it will pump fog up 3-4' into the tank. Put a piece of window screen over the pipe to keep the critters in the tank.