I'm crossing over to the dart side!

[DAVIDFBT]

Hello everyone, I heard about this website from a person on another website and after browsing for 10 minutes, I registered. This is the first time I have set up a dart frog tank, but not the first time I set up a Paludarium or Vivarium. I currently have a 20 gallon tank with Firebellied toads in it that could very well look like a dart frog tank. Now I'm staring a 10 gallon tank for darts.

I already got the basics of how to make a nice dart frog themed tank as you can see by my FBT tank. I'm thinking creeping fig on the background, a bromeliad somewhere in there, a couple of Anubias growing emersed and a ground cover of riccia. I drilled a hole in a piece of malaysian driftwood and siliconed a tube to it that has a little pump on the end of it so the piece of wood will be a sort of water feature with gravel around it so the water can drain down through the eggcrate with window screen false bottom.

I already did a little bit of reading on blackjungle and decided to get wither 2 Dendrobates Azureus or 2 D. Auratus, but i'm leaning more for the Auratus. The only problem I see is I don't really know how to start a live food culture. Does anyone have any good links on how to start a flightless fruit fly culture?

Here's a picture of my Firebellied Toad tank next to the once empty 10 gallon dart tank:





I'm looking forward to being on this website learning from the experts.

[markbudde]

Welcome aboard. Your FBT tank looks awesome. Any chance of a higher res shot?
-mark

[Mikembo]

Welcome to a new addiction. Once you start you can't stop! Well, if you are just starting out with a 10g tank I would recomend a couple of Auratus rather than Azureus. For making your own fruit flies I would get the mix and starter cultures for Josh's forgs here is the link:

Poison Dart Frogs Poison Arrow Frogs Frog Feeder Insects Fruit Flies Fruit Fly Culture Jewel Orchid Dart Frog Terrarium Supplies Vivarium Supplies by Josh's Frogs

you can get some reusable cups from Walmart or any store. What I did was cut a hole on the top of the lids and got some thick packaging foam to use for the ventalation holes. Good luck and welcome Again to the Addiction!

[Dean]

I'm no expert by any means but welcome to the Dendroboard.

[DAVIDFBT]

And here is how my Dart tank looks like now after I put great stuff on the back with silicone and coco bedding over it and with the piece of wood I plan to have as a water feature.

[Mikembo]

I almost forgot here are some good links for starting out. they helped me out when I first started. I would recomend bookmarking these links:

Some really great info on PDF care basics
Poison Dart Frogs Poison Arrow Frogs Dart Frogs & Poison Arrow Dart Frogs Terrarium Animals from Saurian Enterprises, Inc.

Great help if you ever have a sick PDF and doing fecals
Frye Brothers' Frogs

Basic "how-to" guide from Josh's frogs
Poison Dart Frog Caresheet Josh’s Frogs How-To Guides

main page to Josh's frogs "how-to" guide
Josh’s Frogs How-To Guides

also a great book to get for starters
http://www.shop.jl-exotics.com/produ...=4&productId=4

The list goes on and on and I couldn't posibly post them all but links are great to start off with.

[Julio]

great firebelly tank!! the dart tank looks great, good start on that.

[beachbabe18509]

Dart tank looks good but I believe you said it was a ten gallon? if so that is waaaaaaaaaay to big of a water area, darts are mainly terrestrial and wont use that water space, and are actually fairly weak swimmers... I would suggest shrinking the pond if not completely doing away with it...

Look at it this way, that water area is taking ub about a 1/3 of usable space in the viv mean the frogs would only have about 6.5 gallons of space usable to them and the minimum rule of thumb is 5 gallons per frog for the mid range to smaller species, with 10g per frog for the larger species....

Hope that doesn't come off as rude, just wnating to let you know so you can give your darts the best home possible, since the FBT viv looks awesome

[DAVIDFBT]

Thanks for the tip amanda, that's just what I need when I'm first starting out so things don't turn into a disaster later down the road. I need some water area to put the little pump that will be hooked up to my water feature, so what I think I'll do is put the pump under the piece of wood on the right, put a wall of eggcrate to enclose the pump, then fill up the rest of the area with gravel with a little depression in the middle to act as a pond when the tank is filled up. Then, with any extra gravel being exposed, I'll cut out a sheet of fiberglass mesh with a hole in the middle and surround the pond with more coco bedding.

[frogparty]

your fbt tank looks killer! I second amanda's advice. Looks like you've already got some sweet know-how about viv building. Just wait till you really get bit by the dart bug. You will be cruising craigs list every day for new tanks... then you'll need a rack for them