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Dis-biotopic displays

25K views 64 replies 40 participants last post by  chrism 
#1 ·
In talking with people who have traveled to areas of Central America and visited populations of D. auratus and O. pumilio, one of the things I noticed is there comments about how they would often find frogs in trash piles and among human debris (some of the highest population densities I've heard people recount were in piles of garbage). These species seem pretty adaptive to disturbed areas and things like bottles, cans, bedpans--pretty much any vessel that can hold water--become excellent tadpole deposition sites.

In an attempt to make aspects of my pumilio and auratus enclosures as biotopically correct as possible, over the last year I've been experimenting with adding various bits of garbage and refuse. I started with some old beer bottles, but the water in those would turn rank as they didn't get washed out frequently enough and would fill up with dead fly carcasses. Old pieces of metal debris, however, rusty and aged with moss and lichen, have worked out really well and add an interesting element to the enclosures. The vast majority of it is just for looks, but in some tanks the only suitable deposition sites are cans, tins, etc. with collected water in them.

I recently set up some new vert tanks and had my camera, so I thought I would share a few images. Things will obviously look better when things start growing in and start looking nice and grungy:









Sometimes, turning over cans and pieces of metal, you find one of these:



This is a peek inside a 30 gal tank that has been going for a while. You can see some fairly recently added cans and debris, but there are other pieces that have become completely covered with moss and epiphytes:

 
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#47 ·
#48 ·
I have seen many a blue jean pumilio in my jaunts through Costa Rica and have found them all over including dump sites, inside rusted out cans, tires filled with water containing frogs, mosquitos and tads. MAN I AM TIRED... it's 4:48am on the East Coast.. night night.. Peter
 
#52 ·
It's all nature - there's no us and them. We're just a bunch of very successful primates - thinking that we're somehow separate from natural processes, feedback loops, population dynamics, etc. doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That doesn't mean that, on our current path, we've got a bright future in front of us but we might not be the first species to experience suicidal success (I'm thinking of the Medea hypothesis).
 
#53 ·
I like the look of the tanks!!!
I was researching Pumilios and came across an article that stated that Pumilios are recolonizing near "human" habitations.
I had the same idea but it was with colored drinking glasses and broken pieces of ceramic.

Good Job!

Zee
 
#54 ·
Nice setups!

I can see both points of view on the disturbed habitat debate. Personally I would say that with the extreme sensitivities these animals have to disturbances and toxins and such, that the mere fact that they are capable of surviving and breeding in a disturbed area indicates its viability. I can see how a high population density can allow for a greater chance for a disease to move through and damage the population faster, however a thing to note could be that frogs found in these disturbed areas could have a greater "resistance" or greater "immunity" to many of the things that would kill wild population individuals due to the fact that they were raised in an environment with levels of these pollutants/diseases. I'm thinking less of a direct adaptation as low level accumulation allowing for the frog's system to be able to withstand these abnormally hazardous conditions.

In any rate I've seen a saltwater tank setup with nothing but garbage in it, and its a design I've been intending on mimicking one day, so I think its cool to see someone doing something similar with a viv.

Also, if you've actually been to these places where these frogs live and have seen the millions of bacteria/fungi/plants species that inhabit it, you'd be surprised that any of them are even able to live at all. Truth is these things are much more hardy than we give them credit, its just because we try to scale down their habitat into a 55gallon tank that we find them challenging. They were all over the place both times I visited Costa Rica. Hell an arataus came out of my shower drain one time and hopped around in the shower with me. Kind of amusing, and awkward.
 
#55 ·
I have to say that I love this idea! I have seen displays similar to this at several zoos that use "garbage" in fish display tanks but I have never seen it utilized for an amphibian species. I doubt I can talk them into doing this at the zoo I work at, though. Anyway, this is a great thread and an awesome example of this idea. Thanks for sharing!
 
#58 ·
Not really...except for the fact that this is just how I work with my tanks. As far as the images I posted at the beginning of this thread, some of the junk I took out, some has remained, and some of the vivariums have been completely renovated.

The image below is where I am keeping a few extra vittatus--you can see there is an old rusty can forming sort of a "lean-to" toward the front. One of the frogs has staked this can out as their shelter and can always be found underneath it.

With such a narrow footprint in a lot of these tanks (many of them are vertically-oriented 18 gal aquariums) I've found that cans with the tops and bottoms missing help provide different layers in the tank, allowing plants and bromeliads to grow over the top of them, but still providing an extra 'level' for frogs to pass through and hide in, breaking up the visual and spatial views they have of one another.
 

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