Limited Guest Access ... Welcome to the Vivarium Forums. You are currently viewing our boards as a GUEST, which gives You very limited access and no posting privileges. Register and gain full access to everything on the site. Vivarium Forum membership is completely free with no tricks or gimmicks. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact support.
46G Water Stream Bowfront Tank: Build Log with Pics.
Below are the schetches for plans of my current project: a forrest and stream vivarium with waterfalls. I haven't decided if i want to go with geckos or frogs, or if you can do both. Right now I'm focused on the construction of my design, which should work for the types of herbs I'm looking into. I plan on using a 46 gallon bowfront. I also plan to create the land forms with "great stuff" and habacrete. Let me know what you think of the design thus far. I hope you can understand the drawing, heh.
The bowfront will give you a great view. It'll big. I highly recommend planning before doing and look at the gallery pics and construction logs. They will help. Mistakes can be made and fixed, but the time you spend will be a learning experience and it can be frustrating.. Goodluck and keep us posted.
First of all, welcome to the forum! You are so lucky to have a bowfront for a vive! They make such beautiful vives (although technically yours will be a paludarium). I like how you are planning for a highland and a lowland. I think it is going to turn out very nicely for you. Like sinflspeed said, make sure you do lots of research! You can't always plan for everything that will go wrong, but having other people's experience will at least help you avoid the mistakes that they made. Good Luck!
Come this wednesday, a nice little thing will happen. PAY CHECK! With the purchase nearing for my bowfront, questions are starting to come up. I was wondering what kind of cover/top will be necessary for this high humidity tank? I plan on using a basking light if needed, and a red night light. Should I build a custom one out of plexiglas or will the stock cover suffice? Will the herps have enough oxygen if the tank has a glass cover?
I am sure you probably already plan on doing this, but in case you weren't... build the highlands out of something sturdy then put the great stuff over it. Making a mound that large of great stuff is a recipe for "never-drying and continually warping"
roger that. thanks for the tip. I think i am planning on using eggcrate to build the structures and coat it with GS afterwards. hopefully i can get the rounded shape im looking for tho.
Last night I purchased the tank, some eggcrate and some GS. I did a good amount of work, laying out the tank landforms with eggcrate and I also managed to GS the "highland". This was the first time ever using GS, next time I'll remember to use gloves.
Thx! I picked up some more GS today, so I plan on having the eggcrate covered by the end of the day.
On a different note, I was thinking about what I want to put in the tank. I am considering a combination of fire bellied toads and newts, with a small variety of fish. Would that work? and how many of each could I keep if so.
Maybe four of each? You should come out somewhere around 6-8 all together I think for that sized tank (someone please correct me if I am wrong). How large are your land areas? It is so hard to tell from pics sometimes. The measure of the surface area of the land will help to tell you how many FBTs you can put in there. Whatever fish you get, make sure they can tolerate colder water. Most tropical species will get sick in the temp that the newts will need. (I think that FBNs need room temp water, I know the newt I have does, but it isn't a FBN.) You can house common guppies (the kind they sell for feeders) in cold water, I breed them in my newt tank. Fancy guppies don't do so well in the colder water though. Goldfish are cold water fish, but they can get fairly large. Also, I wouldn't put in anything too expensive, because it may get eaten. Another good thing to add to the tank will be trumpet snails (make sure they are trumpet snails and not regular snails, the regular ones will eat any plants you put in the water, the trumpet snails will not, they only eat tank waste, so they also help keep the tank clean), the newts will eat the small ones, so you will have a food source in the tank for them. Ghost shrimp are also a good addition. I also have a chinese algae eater in my newt tank, he keeps algae from growing too much, and is a great tank mate, he's also fun to watch. He like the newt just fine, but if any of the other fish try to go in his little cave, he chases them off, lol. A pleco (what is commonly reffered to as an algae eater, even though they need other food to be healthy), would not be a good addition, because they get pretty big.
46G Water Stream Bowfront Tank: Build Log with Pics.
Linear Mode
