Large Vivarium Construction

[SuperSaiyanGoku]

Thanks for the compliment on the user name. I used to be a fanatic on Dragonball z stuff. As a matter of fact I have every 9 inch movie collector series action figure for a complete collection. Now I am into bleach. I love both the manga and the series. Anyways where did you find the Leo? They are pretty hard to come by. I have an even more rare fish. I have two tiger datnoids, one over 17 inches and the other at 12. I sold two of my best looking from my collection to a guy I Chicago. I recently just built a small Viv. I am going to post some pics on here soon. I just wish there was a way to post pics from my iPhone. As far as the rays, watch the male during breeding season. The male tends to be very aggressive and bites on the female's disc. I used to feed mine all kinds of foods. I would have feed them and they would get to know me. One trick is to shove Massivore Delite into shrimp and soak the shrimp in Zoe, Zocon and garlic extreme. Very nutritious and will bring out the spots more on the disc. Well have fun with the rays, they trully are majestic creatures and extremely intelligent. Let me know if you have any questions. Sorry to hear they are tearing things up in your tank. They are always blowing water into the gravel searching for food. It is in their nature to do this. Careful of the spine they shed. You will see it start to push the other one out of the way. Once it falls off be careful in your gravel sifting around cleaning. The spines stay venomous for many weeks to months in the water and out. Just get it out and put it in a container. They are pretty cool.

[Energy]

Sounds like you know your rays. I have kept both saltwater and freshwater rays most of my life but this leo was my first "blackie" as they are called in the trade.

Since then I have purchased a few more and have quite a few connections established. In fact I can get them quite regularly now if I choose. Both wild caught and captive bred: black diamonds, p-14's, henlei and leo.

If you need any help or have any interest I would be glad to help you out. The Leo's and Henlei have a lot more personality than a retic or motoro.

I use Raphashy superpig to bring out the colors of the discus, frogs and rays. I feed the rays and everything else live bloodworms and earthworms, smelt, beefheart and other frozen foods.

Occasionally I catch a big batch and dust the fruit flies with calcium and superpig.

So far everything is doing great. I constantly watch and monitor to try and keep it that way.

The system is still young and growing. I think it has only been up for about 1.5 years or so?

I think there must be a pretty large population of microfauna established as I don't see that many fruitflies but the frogs are very fat.

In fact in the last few months my fruit fly population in the system has dwindled to the point where I took out my big pitcher plant- I felt it might be to much competition for food with the frogs.

Since then there hasn't bee much of a change in the visible fly population established in the system but the frogs are as fat as ever. They have got to be getting there food from somewhere and as I watch them there are picking at things that I can't possibly see.

[bgmike64]

Pics, please!!

[vivbulider]

we need a update

[vivbulider]

we need a update

[gator]

Very Nice tank! I see its been a bit since the last post but I am currently in the research phase of turning my 600 gallon 8'x4'x2.5' Aquarium into a vivarium and I noticed you have a solid bottom under the terrestrial part of your tank and it had a slope rather than a true false bottom for water to drain into. The base of my tank is reasonably large as well 8'x4' and had thought about doing the same thing with the slop that headed towards a small water feature like a shallow 4"-6" deep pool. I was wondering how well that is working out? Is there enough drainage and would you use the same method if you were doing it all over again?

[Energy]

Originally Posted by gator

Very Nice tank! I see its been a bit since the last post but I am currently in the research phase of turning my 600 gallon 8'x4'x2.5' Aquarium into a vivarium and I noticed you have a solid bottom under the terrestrial part of your tank and it had a slope rather than a true false bottom for water to drain into. The base of my tank is reasonably large as well 8'x4' and had thought about doing the same thing with the slop that headed towards a small water feature like a shallow 4"-6" deep pool. I was wondering how well that is working out? Is there enough drainage and would you use the same method if you were doing it all over again?

No Sir- I actually removed all of the land sections and completely redid the tank. I needed more rooms for the rays and felt that althought I needed the land mass for the terrestrial animals there must be a better way to do it and be able to optimize water and land area together.

I built elevated land areas using Pvc pipe and eggrate. I set the height of the land "islands" at the height that I wanted the water section. The fish can freely swim and access all of the area beneath these elevated "islands".

From the frogs perspective- nothing much has changed- they have about the same amount of room they had before, but the fish have about 2-3 times as much space due to lifting the constraints that the land area occupied.

[stevenhman]

Wow, I bet that was quite the pain in the butt! Hope the re-done tank looks as good as it did at first.

Does the water area look strange? I'm imagining shadowy darkness under the land masses.

[moore40]

Um..... Wow! Just wu-wow!

[ryan10517]

i think its about time for an update on how this tank is goin. I mean come on, this exact tank inspired me to come into this hobby its too amazing to not keep us updated (with pics!)