55 gallon journal

[Laxman]

possibly one of the most nicely done "see through" vivs that I have seen. Honestly looks amazing well done. most definitely will use some ideas for my first one.

[RicktheRarefrogbreeder]

Wow! Where did you purchase the wood?

[markbudde]

I got it at Petco. It's nice to be able to see it before you buy it.

I'll try and post some new pics when I get a chance to take some new pics. It need a manicure.
-Mark

[stevenhman]

Any updates? Very nice tank!

[pygmypiranha]

Love the tank. I really did like the idea of having the giant 'stump' on one side off center. It makes for a nice center piece in the cage. Very nice indeed.

Loved the construction diary and pictures. Thanks for sharing.. Have any updates or news on the frogs? Are they breeding or anything of that nature?

[markbudde]

OK, a minor update. I don't have any good whole tank shots because the glass is covered in algae, and there are eggs all over the tank, so I don't want to start moving around film canisters right now.

Last year, I replaced the lights with compact fluorescents from ahsupply. The lights were good, but they were too bright. They turned my viv into a sauna, so I only ran 2 of the 4 at any given time. This caused there to be some REALLY bright spots and some really dark spots. It also burned some of my plants (but made some flourish). It also let that thick bubbly algae go to town. It covered everything, broms, orchids, glass...

A few weeks ago I replaced the compact fluorescents with 4 48" T5 bulbs. This has let me turn off the fans in the hood. I also started an extreme desnail and deslugging campaign. I've pulled out well over a hundred snails over the past month, using lettuce as bait. I have not lost any clutches to snails since the anti-snail campaign began, and have also notice the first new growth on some orchids in a long time. It looks like one of my orchids might finish a bloom for the first time since I put it in. I haven't added any leaf litter lately due to the deslugging, so there is usually a lot more litter.

Anyway, as I said, there are a bunch of eggs in there right now, there are currently 3 males, 1 female and one juvi.













The inhabitants...
All 4 adults in one brom


Guarding his 6 eggs.


6 eggs in this canister.


3 eggs on this leaf


This guy was posing with his pack this morning.






And the youngest frog in the viv.

[Julio]

great piggy back shots!!

[ChrisK]

Insane pics. So are you still using the clay at the top, and did the solacryl warp at all (and are you going to replace it at the 2 year mark)?

[stevenhman]

Wasn't it your plan not to feed this tank(from external ff cultures?)? If so, has this gone well?

[markbudde]

Took some new photos yesterday. It doesn't have that really cool grown in look some tanks get, maybe because it's mostly broms and moss. Because moss has grown to cover nearly every surface of wood, you can't see the depth in most places in these photos (since it all just looks like a mass of moss). Anyway, here are some current shots...

Front


The end cap of the viv.


The other front of the viv.


This piece of wood used to be completely barren, now it's covered in moss.


A shot through the viv, long ways.


A brom pup with a tadpole in it.


You can see a piece of dogfood in this picture. I add dogfood to my viv every couple weeks. It will mold over, get covered in springtails and other bugs, eventually turn to dirt and frog poo and then turn into moss. All that moss growing on the little column of wood originally grew on decayed dogfood. I cut the moss back significantly before taking these pictures.


You can see an orchid spike about to bloom in this pic.


All of the broms (almost) have finally pupped. I now end up throwing out a pup about once every two months.


When I first set the viv up, I had the misting tubing running along the top of the viv. To prevent the frogs from hanging out there the whole time, I covered the whole misting tubing in a kitty litter (bentonite)/peat moss mixture. Here you can see how well the moss has done on this. Other places the bentonite dried up and cracked off.


On the lower left side of this photo you can see a brom with a huge root system. Just to the right of it is mini-trailing african violet (currently not in bloom), also with lots of aerial roots.


Due to the way I added all of the wood when I set it up, this tank has a lot of hiding space/tunnels under the wood. The frogs rarely venture to the bottom of the viv, but if I hold off feeding for a few weeks you will see them move down to the bottom. Here is an example of a tunnel under the wood, shot through the aerial root system shown above.



All of the moss in this photo is green, but looks yellow in this photo.