# self-sustaining vivarium ideas



## LNK89 (Dec 19, 2009)

Hello everyone, I have been thinking a lot lately about self -sustaining vivariums. It has always been something that interests me. Now I know that a truly self-sustaining vivarium is probably almost impossible to do, but I would like to see how close I could get.

My goal would be to have a tropical vivarium with bugs as cleaning crew and food for one type of predator. Ideally I would not have to feed whatever is living inside they would just hunt for the bugs in the vivarium and survive fine without having to dust the food. I am thinking I would like to have a small water feature, but I am not too sure about that part. It would be really cool if I could figure out how to get a natural filtration system going so I wouldn’t have to have an external filter. But I am not sure if that is possible.

Basically for me to call this a success all I would have to do is refill water/misters, trim leaves of plants, and occasionally add more bugs if needed or some food for the bugs if needed.

Now the tank I will be using is a 120 gallon glass tank. It has 2 overflows and some holes already drilled in the bottom.

Any thoughts or comments on this would be very helpful. Can it be done ? What would be a good animal to put in it? I would like it to be more of a display tank so I was thinking day geckos, but that might not be a good fit for this. 

All suggestions are appreciated.


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## Spaff (Jan 8, 2011)

Someone on here has tried something similar a long while ago. Search for compostarium I believe, and you should find more information on that tank. I think one issue you're going to run into with this is the supplementation. Maybe a UVB bulb over a small screened area would help with this issue, but I'm not really knowledgeable enough about that to say. Maybe Ed or something else can weigh in.


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

Search "refugium"


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Vitamin D3 is not produced by any invertebrates (and if fed to them digested and converted to cholesterol)... You also need to figure out a way to get a carotenoid that has vitamin A activity for the animals in question (anurans appear to be unable to convert beta carotene)..... 

So you have to figure out a way to provide access to UVB.. 

Ed


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## frograck (May 1, 2005)

Springtails and dwarf woodlice living off detritus, and vampire crabs as the predator. 

Supporting a vertebrate as the top predator seems very difficult.


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