Help Me Please! construction of a viv!

[Christopherus]

Please i need someones help, i recently stumbled upon poisondart frogs and these beatiful vivarium enclosure designs. i desperatly want to design one of my own but unfortunatly i have absolutley no idea on how to do so. I wanted to get an Exo-terra design terrarium. i want live plants and i want a waterfall leading to a small pond in the front corner of the terrarium. do i need a false bottom for this? but i see that the pump has to be accesible incase it stops working but i dont understand how to do that without messing up the background that comes with it, and i have no idea on how to create a background if i have to get rid of the one that comes with it.. do you absolutley need a filter for the pump or can i just have a pump? and what about water replacement? can i just leave the same water in it forever or is there another way of refreshing it. im sorry to lay all of these questions down on you like this, but ive been doing reserch for days now, and none of this stuff makes any sense to me. Please someone help me.

[onefstsnake]

Ok well I believe my latest viv is alot like what you are wanting.

Its an 18x18x18 Exo-Terra. For the pump im using a small pump found at most pet stores. Just a pump no filter, plants should be able to filter the waste once growing properly. The pump is housed in a 3" PVC pipe that is siliconed to the bottom of the tank. I drilled alot of small holes in the bottom of the PVC to allow water into the pump but keep dirt out. (so the pump wont clog). I coated the PVC with silicon and coverd it in coco fiber. There is a hole in the PVC for the pump outlet. I siliconed a half round of cork bark to the PVC for the waterfall.

You can do a false bottom, it doesnt weigh as much. But I dont move my tanks. I just used about 2-3" of medium gravel found at most home improvement stores. (cheaper than a pet store).

On top of the gravel I layed 2 sheets of landscaping cloth. (anti-weed cloth)
Then about an inch of sphagnum moss (comes in a brick), then a half inch of coco fiber (comes in a brick), and finally about a half inch to an inch of forest bedding (comes in a bag) cypress multch.

For the background I used GS (great stuff expanding foam). I also put a coat of silicon on the glass where the GS would be to help the foam stick better. After the foam dried I covered it with silicon and applied coco fiber.

You can leave the water in the tank as long as its staying relatively clean. I never do water changes, just add when the water is low. Dont let the water level get above the gravel, this will cause most plants to rot and die.

Heres a few pics of the viv I made.











Hope this helps.

[Christopherus]

Wow! thats amazing.. you pretty much explained most of what i was asking.. but i still have a few questions.. the pvc pipe housing the pump does it go all the way to the top of the terrarium and stay open or how exactly do you access the pump? and how exactly did you make the pound that the water flows into? thanks alot though, it really helped me..

[onefstsnake]

I made mine go about 1/2" from the top. Just pull it out to service the pump if needed.

I dont really have a pond in mine, the waterfall flows into a small bed of rocks.

If you do have a pond you need to figure out how to keep dirt/debris out of the circulating water. Ive used plexiglass to block off land/water. But since the water runs through the entire bottom it would be somewhat difficult to do well. You would need the pond area deep enough into the gravel so that there was actually a pond. (since the water level is the same height as the gravel). And someway too keep the substrate from falling into the pond once its going.

You could silicon a plexiglass cube to the bottom of the tank for the pond. Drill small holes near the bottom of the cube to allow the water to exit. (like the water getting in the PVC). The cube would have to be as tall as the substrate though. Now that I think of it, it should work pretty well. The cube would have to be wider at the top then the bottom, so frogs can get in and out easily. So maybe like a funnel shape. lol might have to try this myself. haha.

Ill post a few pics of construction soon.

[onefstsnake]

You can see the PVC pipe, GS and coco fiber in these pics. and see how deep the substrate will be.



You can kinda see where the waterfall drains into in this pic.

[Christopherus]

i see, the cube thing sounds like a good idea! if you made the cube big enough and found a way to keep the substrate out, do you think you could just fill the cube with marble size gravel on the bottom and get some smaller gravel twords the top of it and just kinnda funnel out the gravel twords the top....maybe? or would it be to clustered for the water to drain quick enough?

[Christopherus]

also onefstsnake, i often see peoplse vivariums with moss and plants growing out of the walls and on them and sometimes on the wood, i kinnda get how to put plants in the walls by just GS foaming a plant pot in the background itself but does it need some kind of drainage? like a tube coming out the bottom or something? and does the moss just eventuall start to grow up the background or how does that work? thanks again!

[onefstsnake]

Well the plant I have up top does not need alot of water. So whenever I do mist it, the plant will use all of it. And some seems into the GS.

As for moss, it can take a while for it to grow. I usually go grab a big carpet of it from a creek near my house. It grows well in my 75g tank but its been going for over a year now. I dont think it would really grow on the background. Moss needs alot of water so you usually see it near streams.