Hi. Brand new to dart frogs but I've been doing fresh and salt water aquariums for a few years. A buddy is into darts and he introduced me to them. I've got a viv build with him coming up so I've been poking around the build threads and whatnot. I've got a few questions.
Why is there so little rock used in building vivs? I'm used to scaping with rocks. I've got some red schist rock that almost looks like petrified wood. I don't have any actual driftwood to use in my viv. I can easily see it being a weight support issue with a false bottom but could the false bottom be replaced with gravel instead? It would be heavy but all of my stands are designed for aquariums so it should hold up. Are there other reasons? I do have some grapevine from my yard but people seem mixed about whether its ok or not.
The posts I've read on mixing frogs (not planning on doing it btw) say that you have to provide the right environment for the type of frog you are going to put in it and they each have special needs. Is this about mixing dart frogs with other types of frogs? The care sheets don't specifically list what part of the forest the frogs typically occupy such as roots, branches, vines, etc. How do I know that I'm building the right type of background for the frog that I will be getting? (first one will be an auratus) Or will a generic PDF viv design work for pretty much any PDF I get?
I'll be building my viv with the methods that my friend uses so I'm sure it will be done properly. I'm just curious about the two points above.
One last question. If I decide this isn't for me, how hard is it to convert a viv back to an aquarium?
Why is there so little rock used in building vivs? I'm used to scaping with rocks. I've got some red schist rock that almost looks like petrified wood. I don't have any actual driftwood to use in my viv. I can easily see it being a weight support issue with a false bottom but could the false bottom be replaced with gravel instead? It would be heavy but all of my stands are designed for aquariums so it should hold up. Are there other reasons? I do have some grapevine from my yard but people seem mixed about whether its ok or not.
The posts I've read on mixing frogs (not planning on doing it btw) say that you have to provide the right environment for the type of frog you are going to put in it and they each have special needs. Is this about mixing dart frogs with other types of frogs? The care sheets don't specifically list what part of the forest the frogs typically occupy such as roots, branches, vines, etc. How do I know that I'm building the right type of background for the frog that I will be getting? (first one will be an auratus) Or will a generic PDF viv design work for pretty much any PDF I get?
I'll be building my viv with the methods that my friend uses so I'm sure it will be done properly. I'm just curious about the two points above.
One last question. If I decide this isn't for me, how hard is it to convert a viv back to an aquarium?