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Ok, ironically, this is the only picture I have of the exhibit at Baltimore. There are seven of these lined up side by side. This one contains I believe 6 azureus. Despite that most recommend to only be kept in pairs, that is really for about 10 gallon tank sizes. This tank is roughly the size you are describing, maybe a bit larger. Azureus and tinctorius will be the most bold and most easily seen by visitors. You can see, however, this may still be difficult as even though they are blue they are well hidden. If you look closely there are one or two at the very bottom of the picture under the plants. I took this at about 8 am at feeding time. Most of the day they stay in the middle to top among the rocks. The tincs in the similar setup are extremely bold as every morning when I go to feed they come to the glass door so there I was having to push them back (literally) in order to keep them from climbing out. Basically, the choice of what to keep in there is up to you. It may be best to keep species separate also if you are not experienced with them.
For the construction aspect, you ARE definitely going to want to have the tank drained from the bottom especially if you are having a misting system installed. This should be easy as you work at an aquarium and I'm sure have plenty of knowledge and easy access to floor drains, etc. The very bottom of these setups were mostly pea gravel for drainage purposes and it is not so messy when soaked with water. A water feature is not necessary although the picture included is one of few that had a waterfall. Most however did have a drip system that dripped water down the walls. This mostly benefits certain mosses and plant growth in those areas.
You will also want to tier the background to allow the frogs to use the entire tank space, and THEY WILL. Also, if you like the rock background, which I personally am a fan of, you could construct one rather cheaply by using a method such as are used in aquariums. Google search: DIY aquarium backgrounds. Here is an example: DIY Rock Aquarium Background - part 2 | Western Cichlid Forum
Since you work at an aquarium, you may already have some experience with stuff like that. These should be much easier to maintain than having alot of substrate to periodically replace parts of.
I recommend having bromeliads and lots of moss for plants. The aquarium had their own botanist that was able to select plants for the exhibits. To me, that is the hardest part about vivariums. The plants in these exhibits were planted into the substrate which was mostly coconut fiber placed in pockets sculpted in the rock structure. You can also attach them to branches or driftwood that are added to the tank.
Sorry this is so long, but I hoped I helped out with much of your questions. I am sure I have forgotten to address some things so just ask and I will respond.
Oh wow, that tank looks nice. Haha, I'm sure mine will look nothing like that... but anways..
So for a tiered background are the dart frogs more of climbers than jumpers?
And it looks like that tank is pretty narrow from front to back. Do you happen to know how deep they were? Alot of what I have seen pictures of seemed to have more floor room than those. But would that just make the frogs harder to find? If so, what would be an adequate depth? And I assume, like in the picture, that if you did a more narrow tank, that you would just load up more of the plants on the background versus the floor.
Okay and for the ones that didn't have a water feature, did they have an area of standing water?
And this I guess is a plant question, but do these plants in the vivarium not grow large roots? I'm just thinking of house plants who need large containers, it would almost seem like they would outgrow the space in terms of roots. But I don't know much about bromelaids.
Oh thought of another question, how did those tanks open? Where was the access? Because we didn't want a door on the front that was really visible so my boss suggested making the back the door and then gluing the background to the door, but really now that I think about it, I would think that would be a really easy way for the frogs to get loose. And especially if it's a narrow tank. But maybe that would work if it were more a deep tank with not so many back plants. But then I guess the frogs wouldn't really be visible. Maybe you have some insight into that...
Dart frogs are more terrestrial than anything. They lack the ability to wrap their toes around plants, etc like tree frogs can. They kind of "walk" in a short-hopping fashion. They can climb very well though. The background would be better if it slopes upward towards the top back corner ( but not just a flat slope of course). Try to have some different levels of ground for them to utilize.
The tanks in the photo were actually between 2-3 feet deep, but the majority of the tank was taken up by the rock formation, which at places comes very close to the front glass. In my opinion, it didnt need to be that deep to have the same setup. In the photo, nothing was actually planted on the back wall because the rocks sloped upward to the top corner. They were planted on the flat spots on top of some of the rock formation. You can, however plant some on the side walls or even the back if you wanted to make things appear more natural.
For the ones without a water feature, there was no standing water. Standing water is not necessary and more likely a bad idea to have. Dart frogs can drown for one as they are NOT swimmers. They will be ok as long as there is a way to climb out though. They don't need any water feature as long as they are misted daily to keep the humidity high (80-100%) because they will drink and get moisture through their skin. The tanks that did have a water feature had it pumped up in one corner at the front so that it created a very slow and shallow stream that was drained out of the opposite front corner. It is mostly for looks and it is not necessary either.
From personal experience at home, I would rather have a tank that is drained and without a false bottom or pond area for convenience of the maintenance it requires. Standing water becomes foul quickly. The water that will collect in the axils of the bromeliads will be all the standing water they need. This would of course be flushed out by the frequent misting of the misting system.
Bromeliads can be planted in the soil but do better as epiphytes attached to branches, etc. Their root systems are not large at all. You could plant very large bromeliads in the soil as a center piece and attach many smaller ones along the side walls and other structural parts of the tank. A good example is to see a tree in the rainforest. It will be covered almost completely by mosses, orchids, and bromeliads. You could also use some aroids that will grow like vines and attach themselves to the background, or even plant in an african violet if you want some flowering or some color.
The idea of making the back of the tank a door just doesn't seem plausible to me. This one was a front opening tank. If you look closely at the bottom right you can see a keyhole. There was one at the top and the bottom of the door on the right side as to keep it locked. The doors had no handles as to keep the public from pulling on it or somehow possibly opening it. (Lol, one of the cages had an extremely venomous viper in it...that would be terrible) The doors were pretty much flush with the wall. We had to use a large suction cup to open them even after the doors were unlocked. And as far as maintenance goes, not much is needed. It would take maybe a half hour every morning before opening to hand mist, clean the glass, make sure the drains were working and clear, remove dead plants, change some of the exhibit around, feed, and do a frog count for 7 of these exhibits. All of which was done from the front before this part of the aquarium was opened.
Okay, well today we got more definite ideas, so looks like we're just going to do the dart frogs. Seems easier to me for now to just worry about these guys and not worry about having a split tank.
So we will also be using a current acrylic tank and just getting it modified. It'll have a way to drain the bottom if water builds up, but I'm just going to do gravel and not a false bottom. And it won't have a water feature. So thanks for making me feel better about that. Just seemed like everything I was reading was saying they needed a dish or something of standing water. But the water gathering in the bromelaids makes sense.
The tank is 24" long, 12" wide and 20" high. So should end up looking pretty nice hopefully. And I explained to her the problem with the back door. So instead it's going to have a hinged top. Not as easy access as a front door, but I think it'll work.
Okay, so then as for the bromelaids working as epiphytes, to get them to stick, is that where you wrap moss around the roots and secure them to the vine or whatever with silicone? Or something generally like that? And then, what would work good as plants to plant in small pots that could be incorporated into the foam background? Or is that not really necessary if you attatch bromelaids somehow to the background?
Well said, AJS822. You mentioned in detail what I was hinting at. Good info also, makes for a good read.
Chibisan, you might want to use hot glue as opposed to silicone because it dries much faster. I tie mine with tiny plastic ties then in time I cut the plastic off when the plants have secured themselves.
As for moss to cover the bottom, do you know if that can be bought at stores? Or is that something that I would have to get online? Haha, not really sure that garden stores really carry much up here in MN in winter. Although thankfully I have seen plants starting to show up at other stores, so maybe I'll be lucky and find most of the plants in local stores.
I would go with green ghost's method of fastening the bromeliads with plastic ties. That way you can remove them once the roots establish themselves. If you glue or silicone them, they will fall off as they are growing. So you want to avoid having to keep reattaching them in that way.
A hinged top will be pretty easy for that size tank. The only thing that might be a hassle is moving the lights every time you want to get in there. The front door was only necessary because of the huge size of the tanks that were being used which were easily 4 ft tall.
As for tropical moss, I would definitely order it online from one of the specialty stores. Most likely any store in your area that has moss, like mine, will have temperate moss. It won't do so well with the tropical environment you will be creating.
If you have trouble finding the plants, Frogbroms-SVT has some good ones. They sell a package of a variety of broms that will fill a 10 or 20 gallon tank. It looks like yours is about 20 gallons. They have some other epiphytes on there as well that will do well. I have never ordered from them, but it looks like a good deal. Some of the sites that have links on this forum will definitely carry the moss. Check out blackjungle.com, they have EVERYTHING!
cool, thanks for the link to another board. I was looking for more. This weekend while at work, I'm gonna try a trial run on making a background. I'm so excited lol
oh, another question... For the tank of that size, what would be an okay number of frogs? Especially if my boss is set on having the two azureus.
And then along the same lines, for the number of frogs recommended, how many culutures of fruitflies should I have set up? I know more is always better.
I'm not sure when we're ordering frogs, but I'm gonna order some flies on Monday to get started on them just so I can kinda get a hang of it and get a line of cultures started.
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