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Full Version: Poll - Your Vivarium Background preference
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Your Vivarium Background preference.
A thin sheet of EpiWeb siliconed to the back of the tank with a generous layer of clay over top has been working out really well for me - so I chose 'Other'.
Cork bark mosaic with great stuff and gorilla glue to attach peat and sphagnum. Its quick, effective, and looks good.
being that im new to this I found neat rock and plant background cover for fish aquariums that is what im goin to use for the one i just built.... later down the road i may build one with styrofoam and grout and drylock....it looks like most members go all out on the Viv then you have to really look for the frogs.
" Cant see the Forrest (or frogs!) through all the Trees!!"
Larry :mrgreen:
My favorite background in vivs is a mixture between cork/ gs foam.
I choose other. For me it all depends on the look i am going for. I love the look of natural cork bark. I recently put some Epiweb in a exo i built and got some moss recently. Hopefully it will spread like i want it to. Here is a Tank I built with Natural Cork. Its grown in a bit since this picture. I also use GS for most of my Viv's. Whether it be to hold the cork to the glass or to secure some wood to the glass, GS is a good BG building material.

[Image: DSCN5656.jpg]
cbreon Wrote:Cork bark mosaic with great stuff and gorrila glue to attach peat and sphagnum. Its quick, effective, and looks good.

That's my vote too, although I've been attaching my cork (and occasional pieces of tree fern) mostly with silicon (although I usually end up adding a piece or two with gorilla glue after the initial bunch has been glued down). I then stuff the gaps between the cork pieces with wet sphagnum. I've built two this way so far, and I just finished siliconing pieces on a third one. My first two vivs I did with ecoweb, and added a blended moss slurry onto it. The moss is finally starting to grow (in spots), but it takes it a long time.

I've got a couple of cans of GS here, but I've yet to try building a viv with it...
Chuck Lawson Wrote:I've got a couple of cans of GS here, but I've yet to try building a viv with it...


When I first started building Viv's I built with mainly GS and driftwood. After researching photos, threads, and other members Viv's, i then switched to (like you cbreon said "a mosaic of gs and cork bark"). Then I tried a no BG Viv and liked its turn out. My current Viv build is a couple big pieces of cork bark GS'd to the back of the tank, and add a few pieces of my manzanita driftwood. Ill try to take pics(another thread), but my camera's battery wont hold a charge for less than 1 or 2 pics.
It all depends on what you want. My absolute favorite back ground is actually stone, tile or ceramic. Its the type of background that can look so good that it can be a center piece in a living room. It can be a work of art. But it takes time, tools and money to make that happen. So after that it all comes down to what you want out of the vivarium. Sometimes tree fern panel is best if you are trying to raise epiphytes. You can just hook cork or wood slabs into it. Of course the easiest is just to skip the background but that doesn't give the frogs more nice places to wander and it also doesn't hide the cords and junk behind. I think that the fastest natural looking back ground is just to stick cork slabs all over the back with glue or silicone then fill the cracks with sphagnum.