# My Madagascar Inspired Mantella Paludarium



## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

ok, so i haven't posted on here a while since i have been concentrating on my tree frogs. but i thought i would post my latest build. it's a 40b that i plan to house a small group of Mantella Baroni. i just got it up and running this past sunday, so it has a lot of growing to do. here are the pics :










hope you enjoy it


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## Sticky Fingers (Sep 28, 2011)

I definitely enjoyed the pics. Awesome job. Can you talk about how you made your land portion?


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

sure, it is just your basic false bottom, which houses the filter, heater and a circulation pump for an irrigation system. everything is accessible from the left rear corner. nothing special really  there's also a bunch of lava rock under the false bottom that i added for extra biological filtration in addition to the chemical/mechanical filtration i get from the filter.


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## Sticky Fingers (Sep 28, 2011)

Very cool. Thanks for your reply.


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## notEZbeingGREEN (Sep 17, 2012)

This looks great!!


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

notEZbeingGREEN said:


> This looks great!!


Thanks Tim.....it gives me something to look at after workdays


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## Golden State Mantellas (Mar 12, 2011)

What species of plants are in there?


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

oh wow, i was really hoping most people would look, move on and never ask....lol terrestrials are an alternanthera sp., a hoya my mother gave me (so it had to go in...lol), a pink nephthytis, and a trio of plants i forgot the names of. aquatics and marginals are mostly cryptocoryne sp., bacopa monnieri, lindernia rotundifolia, hc, hydrocoytle 'japan', micro sword, a microsorum sp., staurogyne repens, anubias'angustfolia', a. nana 'petite',amcella repens, and assorted mosses, including fissidens fontanus, java moss and flame moss. 

i also have a few orchid species planned, but am waiting until after the holidays to order. i prefer not to take any chances on shipping delays. a few of the species i have planned are aerangis species from Madagascar. unfortunately, they will be the only true plants from Madagascar in this tank, hence the name Madagascar 'Inspired' 

i probably missed a few, but they probably aren't important...lol


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## Wings (Apr 1, 2012)

Lol.. as soon as I saw Staurogyne repens and Fissidens fontanus I knew you were an aquascaper. Perfect combination of the two 

This tank is great! I would have loved to see the pics as you were building it. This is seriously one of the best tanks I have laid eyes on, though I'm not sure thats saying much


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

Thank you Wings. yup, i'm a planted tank guy  here's a link to part two of the build. there is a link to part one in there as well. 

thanks for the kind words 

Bill


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## Wings (Apr 1, 2012)

No link in your above post!


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

my apologies, sometimes this old brain just shuts down.....lol 
My Madagascar Inspired Mantella Paludarium

there's also a build of mine for my white's tree frogs in that subforum. that's what happens when you give me 125 gallons of tank and nothing else to do...LOL


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## Duff (Aug 4, 2011)

Hi Bill! Great to see you over here with your new set up, it looks amazing! I really like the transition between the land and water. What type filter did you end up doing, internal, external? looking forward to seeing it grow in


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## crazydaz (Nov 18, 2012)

Such a nice system!! I'm really in awe of our skills, and as this fills in, it will just keep looking better and better! Have you added any ferns? As a noob, I have to ask: how long does this type of build typically take to fill in?


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

Duff said:


> Hi Bill! Great to see you over here with your new set up, it looks amazing! I really like the transition between the land and water. What type filter did you end up doing, internal, external? looking forward to seeing it grow in


yeah, i hesitated in posting here. guess, intimidated is a better word. i have seen some of the tanks on here, and wow, they blow me away. wasn't sure if mine was up to snuff....lol

i went with internal filtration, and the entire area under the stump is covered in lava rock and bio media for extra bio-filtration and i'll be adding a nice group of cherry shrimp in there in a few weeks. i decided on neos because this tank doesn't get a heater. they will get room temp in the basement. so i wanted something proven to be hardy. and you cannot beat rcs for that


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

crazydaz said:


> Such a nice system!! I'm really in awe of our skills, and as this fills in, it will just keep looking better and better! Have you added any ferns? As a noob, I have to ask: how long does this type of build typically take to fill in?


hey buddy! good to see ya over here!

there is a fern in the back left corner of ground level. i think to be fully grown in to where i can say, yeah, that's what i had in mind, about a year to 18 months.


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## crazydaz (Nov 18, 2012)

Wow! That's surprisingly long!! I thought it would be covered within 4-6 months.

Has anyone tried to "speed things along" by injecting terrariums/vivariums with CO2 gas? Sans critters, of course! Wouldn't that create faster plant growth, just like inside a planted aquarium? A la "dinosaur" times when plants used to get to the size of houses? Essentially, you have an incubator there...plenty of water, oxygen, humidity, so I would think that if you could introduce CO2 into the system during the the daytime (and turn it off at night), wouldn't that increase the growth rate?


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## philly phrog guy (Aug 13, 2012)

i'm sure someone has tried speeding things up. and it probably will be grown over in about 5 months, but i plan on 18 months to where I like it and say yes, it's done!! 

i have considered "fast tracking" it and putting the plants into a vegetative state by running lights 24/7. i know it can be done with most terrestrials. i have done it with "alternative medicine" plants for years. but the problem i would need to worry about is algae. and i don't know how the crypts would deal with it.

i have seen people pump co2 into their dry starts on tpt, but no one could really determine if it was making a difference though. 

i like that thought though. excess co2 like in prehistoric times to make everything grow bigger. but i want everything to grow small, but lots of it...lol


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