# 18x18x24 Zoo Med



## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

I've been lurking the boards for quite sometime. I love the photos, build logs, and info. Thanks to all who contribute.

I use to keep and work with darts ten years ago. I eventually phased them out as I became more focused on working with snakes. Last year I decided to jump back into frogs (no pun).

I bought a couple of red eyed tree frogs but soon found myself not wanting to deal with crickets (plus the crickets started to eat my bromeliads). I sold the red eyes and the tank remained planted but empty for a year (as I figured out what frogs to get). Its a good thing I left it empty. The springtails exploded in the tank and it also allowed me To move some plants around to suit the animals I finally decided on. 


I bought 4 Dendrobates ventrimaculatus. I introduced them into the tank yesterday. They explored the tank and immediately began to work on the springtails. 

The tank is lit by three 26w cfl bulbs.
All but two bromeliads are pupping.

Here are a couple of pics:
FTS









Plant list









One of the frogs









Enjoy


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## EverettC (Mar 9, 2004)

Very nice tank, your plants seem to be very dark green. Is that from your camera or are they really like that? Welcome to the board!

Oh, as always, more pictures will probably be a necessity .


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## JJhuang (Feb 5, 2010)

Nice, Liking the 3 side background. Im thinking about doing that and also adding alot of broms for when i get pumilios.


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Thanks guys.


EverettC,
It's the lighting. I was having trouble balancing the lighting from the cfls and the on camera flash. I was feeling lazy and didn't pull out the off camera flash for that photo. Most of the plants are a nice bright lime green. The neo zoe have a lot of red. The neo fireball is gaining red, the compacta is red in the center, the earth star at the top is pink/green, and the neo ariel is purple/green. The colors are much better in person 

Here's a photo of the compacta before it bloomed:










JJhuang,
The three sides are great because it gives the frogs more area space and you can plug broms directly into it. The vents climb all over the sides and back.


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

A couple more shots:

Neo. cryspata tigrini flowering









A poser (I love how active and out in the open these guys are)


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

Beautiful frog, and, I love the tank.


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## Topete (Sep 27, 2009)

nice, You are lucky!

I rarely get a glimpse of mine, They are always inside a brom or a canister


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## Philsuma (Jul 18, 2006)

Excellent three sided viv.

Usually the mark of an advanced hobbyist, so you are WAY ahead of the curve.

Great labeling too.

Impressive.


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Thanks frogface.

Topete,
It's funny because they split up into two groups. A pair stays in or around the leaf litter. The other pair stays near the dischidia and in or around the bromeliads (occasionally in the film canister). So I get the chance to see one group while the other is hiding. I don't know their sex yet though.

Philsuma,
It was all trial and error. I've never designed a tank like this before. I lost a couple of plants to rot (I've added I added two pc fans since then) and fungus gnats. I also changed the arrangement around a bit. I learned a lot from making this tank. If I decide to make another one I'll know better what works for me.

Here's what the tank looked like before the gnat invasion that killed my watermelon peps and the wet conditions that killed a couple of tillandsias and broms:


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## PantMan (Dec 10, 2009)

Beatiful frogs, beuatiful tank, great shot of the poser.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

great viv! lots of laying spots.


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## Topete (Sep 27, 2009)

Sake135 said:


> Thanks frogface.
> 
> Topete,
> It's funny because they split up into two groups. A pair stays in or around the leaf litter. The other pair stays near the dischidia and in or around the bromeliads (occasionally in the film canister). So I get the chance to see one group while the other is hiding. I don't know their sex yet though.


They will be easy to sex since they mature very fast. Two of mines are very fat and wide and one is Thin, Plus they call soon enough, (not loud though)


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Julio said:


> great viv! lots of laying spots.


Thanks!



Topete said:


> They will be easy to sex since they mature very fast. Two of mines are very fat and wide and one is Thin, Plus they call soon enough, (not loud though)


My wife thought she heard them calling yesterday. I haven't heard anything yet. I'll just have to keep an eye out and the ears open


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## Topete (Sep 27, 2009)

Call is very faint! If you go to mist king they have call samples..

You may already know that


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

I did not know that. I hadn't been to the mistking website in quite a long time. I took a listen. I hope I can hear that over the pc fans


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

I added two new plants recently. One is a fern from BJ and the other one is an orchid mini. 
Hopefully they'll take off like the other plants.









Close up of the orchid









All of the plants are doing extremely well (including the frogs of course ).
It'll be interesting to see what the tank looks like in a year.

Neo. Ariel pup









D.ovata new leaves









D.nummularia new leaves









Enjoy


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Six months later:









some development:









and a male for good measure:


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

congrats!! i am sure there are much more to come, once they get going its hard to get them to stop


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Thanks Julio. It's been years since I've bred darts. I may leave any future clutches in the viv. I just pulled these so that my son could see them develop.


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

Congratulations! Thanks for the update


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Sake135 said:


> Thanks Julio. It's been years since I've bred darts. I may leave any future clutches in the viv. I just pulled these so that my son could see them develop.


great to hear, way to get the kids involved!!


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Thanks.

They are actually his frogs. The tank is in his room. He loves them. I'm going to setup a group of leucs for him too. The only thing he likes more than reptiles and amphibians is dinosaurs. 

Maybe the fact that I've kept everything from tarantulas, snakes, lizards, and even roaches at some point has something to do with his interests. I doubt it though


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

hahhaha, pretty soon i am sure you will be able to clone him a T Rex


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## Dartfrogfreak (Jun 22, 2005)

I love the tank! I really like how you planted everything up top forming a nice canopy.


Great job!


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Dartfrogfreak said:


> I love the tank! I really like how you planted everything up top forming a nice canopy.
> 
> 
> Great job!


Thanks. The frogs love it. They sleep in the broms at night and hunt for FF on the floor in the day.

The setup makes it super hard to get a well exposed picture with my slr (the floor is usually underexposed and the canopy overexposed). 

Here's a recent shot from my phone camera (don't mind the temporary plastic cup):


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

Man has this tank evolved. I lost three of the four adult vents. I moved the remaining male to a 20 high. He is still going strong. I cleaned the tank out and rearranged/added new plants. The leucs are now in here. 

This is how it looked a couple of weeks ago:

I ended up removing the cissus because it was choking out the other plants. A couple of broms were crowding each other out so I removed them as well. The earth star became etiolated so I pulled that too. 

I'm going to add pleurothallis grobyi, spread some of the pep prostata around, and maybe some vining fern. 

Here it is currently:


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

A leuc lurking in an orchid:


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

It's been quite sometime since I updated this tank again. The tank is 2 years old and has gone through quite a few changes. I had to pull a piece of cork bark from the wall to get to a large American cockroach (I really hate those!) that hitched in as a baby in one of the plants (Won't be purchasing from that source again, lol). I was lucky I spotted it one morning. Also have been battling snails from same source. Wish I would have bleached the plants to begin with but I can't change that now. They leave the plants alone for the most part. I cut back the cissus to its stem. It was taking over. It took almost a year but it has started sprouting leaves again.

After I installed a mistking mosses began to sprout from the sphagnum moss I used when mounting vines and the pep prostate has gone wild. Its pretty cool to see the mosses showing up randomly everywhere. Also the neo compacta small form (which doesn't stay very small by the way) keeps pupping. I have to keep clipping the pups back. It looks natural though because in nature nothing looks perfect.

Onto the pics:
FTS









Moss growing on neo compacta small form









ficus sp lance









moss growth

















pleuro









top view of various plants


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## carola1155 (Sep 10, 2007)

Sake135 said:


> After I installed a mistking mosses began to sprout from the sphagnum moss I used when mounting vines and the pep prostate has gone wild. Its pretty cool to see the mosses showing up randomly everywhere.
> 
> Onto the pics:
> FTS


Alright... I gotta get myself a mist king... haha

Looks great!


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## Shinosuke (Aug 10, 2011)

That is a beautiful tank! I like what you said about perfection in nature not being perfect, so true. You've really captured it here with the lush and natural-looking growth. The moss growing on the brom is especially cool.
Thanks for sharing!


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## Sake135 (Jun 12, 2009)

carola1155 said:


> Alright... I gotta get myself a mist king... haha
> 
> Looks great!


A misting system definitely changes the growth dynamics of your plants.


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