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Dart Den

Serving the Dart Frog Community Since 2004...

My first tank, in progress picture...
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My first tank, in progress picture...
#1
To anyone starting or thinking of starting - wow is this fun! Here is about 25-30 hours of work, including trips to Home Depot, Pet Kingdom, Booze Depot, and the drug store (for tupperware.) For the record, I'm about $200 into this, but you could spend half of that if you don't buy an ultrasonic fogger, a couple tools, and four times the moss you need!)

This is so much fun I think my bug's 10 gallon will be getting terra-formed in the near future!

The big hill to the right is based around the water container for the fogger. I chose to keep that water source seperate from the main tank flow because I think clean water will give the fogger a longer life-span.
I used a false bottom because I'm sure I'll be adding a water feature soon. (Maybe dripping water down the vine on the left.)
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#2
What is that wood you are using?
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#3
Sandblasted and heat treated grape-vine...

...which I realized after I bought might have a good chance of goingmoldy or rotting. Whats done is done though, so I'm going to give it a try and if it goes bad I'll replace it.

(In the background is cork-bark, and the vine looking stuff is Fluker's bendable branch or something.)
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#4
That's what I thought. Good Luck with it. I had a viv many years ago with a small piece that did mold a little. I wonder if it could be treated with urythene or thomsons water seal or another type of water proofing to help prevent that? Can any of the vets out there shed some light on this?
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#5
It's a nice start you got there. Keep up the good work.
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#6
wow, amazing asthetic. hope the grape vine doesn't misbehave.
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#7
yeah... I was wondering about some kind of water sealant. I wouldn't mind if it darkened up the wood a little also. I just have to make sure it would be non-toxic, but I don't see why it wouldn't be. Anyone know?
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#8
i'm talking out of my butt now 'cuz i've never tried this, but people use ace concrete bonding agent in vivs. usually it gets mixed with coco bedding/dirt/twigs and used to coat great stuff backwalls. it seems like you could try a test patch on the back of a stick to see what it looked like when it's dry. it is widely believed to be safe for the viv, and i assume that it is water proof given the above application. does anyone else have an opinion or better idea?
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#9
Thats very interesting. Ive never seem someone landscape in layers like that. The wood will probably go bad, and im like you i would probably just do what i wanted and if it goes bad deal with it then. The only problem with that is that you will pretty much be redoing the whole viv if im seeing it correctly. Black jungle ghost wood is around $15 and its probably a lot better than the headaches of redoing the whole thing.
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#10
I started with the intention of having some nice hills and valleys, and the seperate container for the fogger made the right side quite high. I dig it.

I'm going to just let the wood do its thing, I can always replace it if it gets out of control. I have a fake background with access to the back for cleaning and such, so the wood pieces come out easily. I'll just find a way to make the new wood fit in well if I need to.

Heres a couple of pics - one is an update of the tank (I intended on having a water flow down to the lowest area in the front left, but the fog pool is just too cool, so I'm leaving it like this. I also just bought a couple of tall green with red trim plants I still need to find room for.) In addition I have some live moss which will hopefully grow well so I can replace the dry stuff completely.

Also, I got me froglets! Ones still tadpole with all legs and tail, so heres a pic of the more mature one, who now has just an 8th in of a tail left.
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#11
(double post... whats my problem. Oh yeah... booze.)
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#12
Looks nice. What is that ground cover plant in the foreground with the little leaves?
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#13
The foreground tiny leaves to the right is Baby's Tears (soleirolia soeifolii), the other fern looking one at the far left and right corner is Verdigris Brass Buttons (leptinella potentillina.) I picked them both up randomly at the local nursery. They are `stepables,` so they are supposed to keep growing and cover the land they have available. We'll see what happens because I don't have much soil for them to move to, just jungle-bedding wood chips...
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#14
Im always eyballing the stepables too. they seem like great ground covers, i dont know how well they will work, but if they do work they will look great. So is that an auruatus up there.
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#15
Yup its an auratus. I'm crossing my fingers the stepables will work. Thing is I don't really have much soil in there for them, just jungle bedding/wood chips with aquarium gravel underneath. When I got the plants they seemed like the were spreading their roots down further - so I'm gambling on it. This is my first tank, so I'm just making educated guesses. I'll keep ya'll updated for sure.

One last picture of where I'm at right now...
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#16
Interesting build but that "in-tank bubbler - fogger" is a big fail waiting to happen. We've come a long way in 5 + years and external cool air ultrasonic humidifyers are now the standard.
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