[Socratic Monologue]

I don't like local oak leaves as much as Southern Magnolia and Live Oak, but they can be used and might be a good choice for leucs (who might well be run dryer than all other dart species). Having leaves shipped to us is kind of crazy when you think about it, unless one lives in Antarctica or something where there are no other options. I like to microwave all my leaves before use (in an open Ziplok freezer bag, for one minute or until hot but not so hot the bag melts).

If you haven't yet, you might give some thought as to whether you want to use the styrofoam background. It won't play with plants very well, likely has places the frogs can get behind and freak you out, and it isn't really any better for climbing than glass (I'd guess; I toss those backgrounds and cover the back glass with contact paper so I can't see my wall).

 

[Socratic Monologue]

It's been washed thoroughly and I'm going to keep it outside of the tank for a while before planting just in case of chemicals or anything harmful.

I picked up a few stones from the river behind my house (I live on the riverbank), but I haven't decided whether or not I want to use them (after cleaning them, of course) or if it would be better/safer to just purchase decorative rocks.

The use of the terms 'washed' and 'cleaning' suggests that you may not be aware of common disinfection procedures for plants and hardscape. If you have considered these procedures and decided against, no offense intended; if you haven't, there are some good links (and lots of other good info) in the Viv 101 care sheet that you may find valuable.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

I will definitely still study the care sheets as well as peppering y’all with questions as I go 😅

I wasn't implying that you should stop asking questions, just so you know. I was just making sure you knew all the questions that are worth asking; once a person has figured out the relevant questions, they're 95% of the way there.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

when would the proper time to introduce microfauna be?

I recall there are a bunch of reasonable opinions on this. If you put them in early, they'll have a chance to ramp up populations before your frogs go in. Not that this is entirely good, though, as new frogs can spend the first couple weeks eating only springs and isopods and making the keeper think they're not eating since no FFs disappear.

Whenever you add the microfauna, you may find it beneficial to save some back and culture them for your next viv (or for supplementing this one for whatever reason -- I don't recall what species of frog you'll be keeping, but I like adding springs to my thumbnail vivs regularly lately). Or you may find that a pain for no benefit to you. Hard to say.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

If you search 'humidity', and order the results by date (thus reading the most recent hits first; this is a pretty good practice for most searches), you'll get a lot of good discussion about RH, ventilation, the use of digital RH meters, and "misting" (scare quotes because a better term is 'heavy rain' or similar). It'll be a fair amount of material to sort through, but reading the range of comments, and the range of ways to phrase similar recommendations, is quite valuable in such an easily misunderstood part of husbandry.

It might not be a bad idea to do the same sort of search on the plants you're considering; making sure you know what you're getting into especially with the Phal would be best (maybe you already have done this, I don't know of course). Posting a photo of the viv might get you some valuable feedback, too. I'm not sure I'd go heavy on ferns with leucs (ferns aren't too 'traversable'), but given the hardscape they might be fine. I don't see that you've mentioned hardscape at all, but since leucs are serious climbers it is a centrally important element.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

The thing about tincs is that they're active climbers as well, but 'climbing' is kind of 'walking, but up high' for them; they're more so mountaineers than acrobats. Mine are up in the woodwork unless they're tending eggs or eating. So, a maximal amount of angled/horizontal branches that are thick enough for a ~2" frog (depending on morph/locale) to walk up are ideal.

Not that this is necessarily worth modeling a viv after (I'm more confident that I'm considering the right things than I am confident that I'm actually successful in a practical sense), but in my tinc build thread I try to talk about the reasoning behind what I'm doing. I continue to be quite happy with the hardscape in that linked viv (not sure how I feel about the plants, but I didn't give much thought to them and it shows).

Not sure who'll find this valuable, but: one thing that I've found makes hardscape design a bit easier is to buy wood (cork and ghostwood are my two woods of choice) in bulk in quantities much larger than I'll need for this one build, and sort through it to find pieces that work together. Small cork rounds from Pangea and ghostwood from Blooms and Branches are about as economical as this gets, and are great materials to work with.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

In some situations, reducing the amount of water per watering ('misting' can be misleading) session in order avoid 'soggy substrate' has caused issues for frogs (dehydration). A suitable substrate such as real ABG doesn't get soggy with any amount of water per session (though watering too frequently can cause issues for plants and frogs). Full saturation to the point of measurable flowthrough at least once a day is no problem for ABG (or turface, or calcium clay, or leaf litter on foam, or probably some others I'm missing). If a substrate can't play nice in rainforest conditions, then it may not be the right substrate for a dart viv.

The combination of targeting RH numbers and throttling misting duration has proven to lead to poor outcomes for frogs on occasion.