# My Very First Viv, a 65g Paludarium



## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Hello, everyone! After much lurking, tons of research, and a few weeks worth of work, I'm ready to share the progress I've made on my first ever paludarium.

I came from the planted tank hobby, but I fell in love with the look of lush green vivaria so here I am. I knew my first viv had to be a paludarium because I really wanted to incorporate at least a small pond with aquatic plants and fish. This is actually my second attempt at the same tank. My first creation was a complete headache and when it was ready to be planted I decided I hated the way it looked and ripped it all out to start over. My bright idea was to have an aquatic section the entire size of the tank with the land kind of hovering over the top of it. I thought it looked like crap and functioned even worse.










So I put that in the garbage where it belonged. It was kind of therapeutic because it was a big pain the butt to construct. I found this forum and decided to go with a conventional false bottom and a greatstuff background. I'll won't really go over much construction because it's all pretty standard stuff. Here are the pics:



























































The lighting is still a work in progress. I will eventually have fully automated PWM-controlled LEDs with dusk/dawn and moonlights. Currently I can run all three sets of LEDs but the automation is still in the works.



So, this will never be on by itself, only in combination with the whites, but here are the amber LEDs:











And here are the moonlights at max. brightness for the sake of the picture. I have them dimmed down for actual use:














So, here's where we stand today. The plants on the land section are pretty much placeholders. I wanted to see how something would respond to the amount of light I have. So far, it seems promising.























Tomorrow's the big day. I'm making the trip to Tropiflora in Sarasota to spend in irresponsible amount of money on plants. I am still 50/50 on getting a Mistking for this viv. Will hand-misting be adequate for some nice broms as long as I can maintain good humidity?


I also lied a little bit. I have another viv but it was kind of an emergency adoption that I didn't build, so it doesn't count. Here's a photo I took the other day:











Thanks for looking! More to come once it's all sexed up with broms.


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Oh, one more thing I'd like to mention about this that I think is kinda cool. Due to my first experience with this tank and because I can't promise that I won't turn this into a planted tank someday, I made everything in the tank removable. As in nothing is permanently attached to the glass whatsoever. We'll see how that pans out but so far it works perfectly. The greatstuff background is made in panels and wedged into the tank so they don't need to be siliconed. I just used contact paper on the outside glass so I wouldn't need to silicone the inside to hide the gs.


And one more thing that kind of sucks. These retarded ass fish found their way under the false bottom. Retarded me made a mistake in the eggcrate and thought I could just fix it by covering it up with the river rocks. I was really pissed that I would have to tear everything out, but they seem to be able to find their way back and forth from underneath the land portion. I'm currently waiting for them all to come out of their own accord then I can stuff some sort of wadding in the opening they've been using.


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## goof901 (Jan 9, 2012)

looks nice!! you should fatten that frog up, it looks awfully skinny. Fruit fly maggots are great for fattening a frog up, but don't feed too many. Also, i think if your fish can find their way in, it should be able to find it's way out


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

goof901 said:


> looks nice!! you should fatten that frog up, it looks awfully skinny. Fruit fly maggots are great for fattening a frog up, but don't feed too many. Also, i think if your fish can find their way in, it should be able to find it's way out


Thank you! It's really weird, the viv I adopted has three frogs. Two of them are plump and healthy looking and this guy's a beanpole. He's usually the first out at mealtimes and eats a good amount. Not sure what the deal is.


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## Ginko (Mar 18, 2012)

Looking good.
Will look even better with all the plants.
My only suggestion would've been to darken the color of the background or perhaps drybrush it with some colors to give the look of gradient and texture.
Good call on the rebuild though, great concept but horrible functionality. 

As far as humidity levels, hand misting should be fine.
Didn't see you mention what kind of a top you have for the tank, 
but if its even a partial glass top, you have nothing to worry about.

Regarding the silly fish that want to go under the false bottom,
definitely plug it up when they're all out.
Same thing happened to me with some extra feeder goldfish I threw into a tank.
It was all well and good until they got big enough that they had to make their final decision about what side of the tank they wanted to live on...
some chose wrong


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Well, I just got back from Tropiflora. Man, that place is gigantic and I was a bit overwhelmed. In retrospect I probably should've had some idea of what I was looking for before I drove down.

This is just one of their giant tents:











This is my haul:











And here's an updated viv shot:














I like the way it's coming along but it seems a little bit full to me. I might be tempted to move a few of the plants to the other viv. My next matter of business is to work out a circulation system.

Thanks for looking


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## DragonSpirit1185 (Dec 6, 2010)

shiloh said:


> Thank you! It's really weird, the viv I adopted has three frogs. Two of them are plump and healthy looking and this guy's a beanpole. He's usually the first out at mealtimes and eats a good amount. Not sure what the deal is.


might wanna do a fecal smear if he is eating and not gaining it might be parasites or something

paludarium looks great btw


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

One small change already...mounted the anubias in the pond to a piece of wood. Hopefully I don't lose a lot of leaves as it adjusts to being emersed.


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

I want to do something about circulation and the condensation on the front glass. I had planned to switch the top to include a passive vent, but I've decided I'm going to try to implement this circulation system:












Hopefully I can make this out of PVC. Two fans for each direction of air flow, two suck in and two push out. I got a variable speed fan controller in case this turns out to be overkill. This will attach to a section of plastic sheet to seal the areas between fans. Then, ideally the whole assembly will just sit on top of the tank rim inside the canopy. Not sure if this will provide whole-tank ventilation since the fans are all co-linear but at the very least it should keep the glass clear.


I went in today and got some better photos:

















































































































And this is my favorite brom of the bunch. Unfortunately I placed it so high that it's hard to get it in a photo from the front:












Thanks for looking


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## Alegre323 (Sep 2, 2011)

looks awesome!
very nice


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## froggzilla36 (Feb 4, 2012)

Sweet tank, it looks really good. After all this contemplation of how i will circulate air in my tank i'm very interested to see how your ventilation system will work and fit in your tank.


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Alright, so there's good news and bad news.

Bad news is I inexplicably screwed up putting together my circulator and ended up assembling it opposite of the way I wanted to.

Good news is that it works anyways! It's a little louder than it should be but glass cleared up pretty nicely. I've got to go back to the store to get new glass cut to fit the top, so I'm probably just going to get more pvc and rebuild the whole thing.

Since I was adding circulating fans anyways, I decided to add a cooling fan to my DIY LEDs, the heat sinks are now much cooler than before.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the viv. Next step is getting some microfauna. Here are some pics:


Notice the PVC tees are both upside down of how I intended them.



















Clear glass! Didn't even have to wipe the glass to take a picture. Really need to get a real camera though, these pics aren't very flattering.










This brom looks like it's about to do something interesting :


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Rebuilt the circulator, correctly this time. Decided to use a smaller diameter pipe, which worked out awesome. The 40mm fans fit very nicely in the fittings for the 1.5" pipe with a few adjustments. Much quieter now and airflow is significantly improved.


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## stevendart14 (Feb 21, 2005)

That very first pic looked epic. I imagined a small grou of isabellas, With the bottom pool filled with various tiny freshwater critters and in some time tadpoles. Those ideas rarely happen, then you bring out big sexy love the tank design. One day Im gonna drop big dollars some plants looks nice keep us updated


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

So, I think I'm going to drain the pond...

I recently had a traumatic drowning in like 1" of water in the other viv, and I'd rather not risk it with a group of leucs. Combine that with the fact that I now have an aquarium project to satiate my aquatic itch and I think it will be for the best.

I think the tank will still look pretty good as kind of a hilly terrain viv. There will be a lot of unused volume under the false bottom, but whatever. Plus I'll gain quite a bit of planting area by ditching the pump/waterfall. Still undecided on how I'll handle the drainage in the pond. I've also considered just draining the pond to like 1/4" of water. Then I can still grow some emersed plants and the leucs can hang out down there if they want.

It's a shame this didn't work out like I imagined, but more than anything I want to have the best interest of the frogs at heart. Plus I learned a lot during construction. Maybe one day I'll revisit this idea with a frogless viv.


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## kitcolebay (Apr 7, 2012)

I did the same thing with my 150 leuc viv. I built a pond in the front of it and after getting it all built, I ditched the idea. I wanted more land for them to play on and more area to plant. I simply filled it in with rock/gravel(hydroton would probably be better), then covered with screen and substrate. This allowed it to still be a continuation of the false bottom. I left a low spot with some river rock for just a little bit of water to pool up, but not necessary.

Went from...










to(older pic)...


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

kitcolebay said:


> I did the same thing with my 150 leuc viv. I built a pond in the front of it and after getting it all built, I ditched the idea. I wanted more land for them to play on and more area to plant. I simply filled it in with rock/gravel(hydroton would probably be better), then covered with screen and substrate. This allowed it to still be a continuation of the false bottom. I left a low spot with some river rock for just a little bit of water to pool up, but not necessary.


Yeah, that's pretty much the exact same situation. I do want to keep the sloping area somewhat visible because it was a PITA to build and I think some variation in ground elevation will make for a more interesting habitat for the leucs. I'll probably end up with something in between, like a more gentle slope so I can still keep some small water area.


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## stevendart14 (Feb 21, 2005)

kitcolebay said:


> I did the same thing with my 150 leuc viv. I built a pond in the front of it and after getting it all built, I ditched the idea. I wanted more land for them to play on and more area to plant. I simply filled it in with rock/gravel(hydroton would probably be better), then covered with screen and substrate. This allowed it to still be a continuation of the false bottom. I left a low spot with some river rock for just a little bit of water to pool up, but not necessary.


Sucks you changed it that looked bad***. There is plenty of plants that can live semi submersed or in constant indirect contact with flowing water(many just dont look as nice). I wasnt going to do another display tank but yall giving me the foliage itch...there goes my frog budget


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Alright, this brom was cool before, but now it's just awesome!


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## 20200 (Sep 3, 2012)

shiloh said:


> Alright, this brom was cool before, but now it's just awesome!


What kind is it?


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

20200 said:


> What kind is it?


That's a good question. Tropiflora sold it to me labeled _Neoregelia 'Ruby Lips'_ but I can't seem to find it on their site now.


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

Some of the soon to be residents!


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## froggorf (Nov 22, 2008)

Amazing work, those leucs are gonna love it!


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## shiloh (Nov 28, 2012)

So, I've been too busy/lazy to do too much on the viv lately. Some of my plants are not doing too hot. Two broms in particular have a lot of dead leaves which I cleaned up yesterday. The korean rock fern, which had been doing awesome, is mostly dead. I also noticed that the ventilation system is making the tank much drier than before. For now I have the system connected but turned off, I might just wait until I have a mistking set up to use it again.

The frogs and the microfauna have been ready to go in for a while but hopefully I'll get around to it this week. Sorry, hope nobody has been holding their breath.


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