Brown Water

[Abraham1907]

I just set up my new vivarium/paludarium, and the water is all brown. It has been flowing through the filter for about a week and is still brown. I have cork bark as the background and driftwood pieces in the water too, I figure that the driftwood is what is causing the brown water... Should I just keep replacing the water until it stays clear? How long will this take?

[Rainfrog]

The wood is the culprit. wood contains tanic acid and this leaches into the water it soaks in. It does change the water PH but should be fine. My aquarium has diferent wood in it and it gets that "Black Water" amazon look after a shor time(most of my fish are from the amazon though). You can boil the wood in in a deep pot if it will fit and this will remove allot of the tanins. if you do it afew times it should help allot, however there will be some left. if you dont like it you can do more frequent water changes. also carbon in the filter helps. It wont hurt most animals it just realy changes the PH. Mystery Snails wont survive in tanic water. they get holes in thier shells and die. I like the back water swamp look myself. what do you keep in there?

[Abraham1907]

Thanks for the info, I will just live with it I guess since it turns back to brown overnight so I would have to change the water daily. I set the tank up for an anole which my mother found at work. She works at a garden center and they got a shipment of indoor plants in from Florida in the middle of winter, and she found him on a leaf. I had kept anoles in the past, so I knew what it was and how to care for it. Well recently my mother was annoying me to clean out its cage because she though it looked dirty, well I was bored that day and had the idea for a paludarium/vivarium for a while and went crazy. Unfortunately the other day when I was moving stuff around I set a large driftwood log down on him without knowing where he was.He was paralized and died 2 days ago, so now I have to decide what to put in there. Here are a few pictures.







The water level is low right now from my lighting issues which I hope you can help me with. I had a regular light bulb fixture over the tank and it was causing too much heat over the land and shriveling my fern, so I had to move it over the water and now it is causing a ton of evaporation. I was thinking about getting a Repti Glo 2.0 Full Spectrum Terrarium Lamp (flourescent tube bulb) to go along the entire length of the tank, and that would provide plenty of light for the plants without the heat. The only thing is, most lizards need a basking area (I think)...

This leads me to stocking. What will live hapily ever after in a 10 gallon, and doesn't need specific lighting needs (basking area)? It should either be arboreal or semi-aquatic since there isn't much land area for a bottom dwelling lizard. Below is a list of the things I have thought about adding, I'm not sure about their compatability so feel free to yell at me and tell me I'm wrong all you want...

* Gold dusted Day gecko
* Some kind of cool newt (possibly fire bellied)
* Fire bellied toad
* Monkey legged tree frog
* Anole
* Tetras
* Mini crabs
* African dwarf frogs

[Rainfrog]

You dont want to mix species. Especialy in a 10gallon tank. Look into Fire Bellied Toads. 2 or 3 of them would love that setup. Mini crabs will take bites of anything they can catch like most crustations. some one put a crawdad in with some RETFs and the frog hit the water and well no more frog. you could have guppys or tetras in the water with the toads as long as you didnt mind one disapearing once in a while. Also i if you dont have filtration pick up a whisper 10i filter anthat will hel the water. That is your best bet. And please please besides like I mentioned above with the fish/herp dont mix species especialy in a small tank. This should only be done by the most exsperienced keepers in large environments and even then its not reccomended. Fire bellied toads are the way for you to go I think. Or a small group of anoles but Im thinking to much water to land for the Anoles to realy be happy.

[Abraham1907]

Thanks a bunch. I have some deciding to do, but will definately take that into account!