My Vivaria

Corpus Callosum · #1 10/23/2007, 05:22 PM

So... too broke and busy to get back into saltwater until I graduate, but keeping myself busy..

Corpus Callosum · #2 10/23/2007, 05:23 PM

This guy born 2 days ago.. he's like only 1/2 cm long!

directional · #3 10/23/2007, 05:41 PM

oh my god that setup is so beautiful ... how much work is put into that? and how what is the maintenence?

shyland83 · #4 10/23/2007, 05:58 PM

That is amazing. I've always wanted to try frogs.

md14fish · #5 10/23/2007, 06:03 PM

Awesome looking!

Corpus Callosum · #6 10/23/2007, 06:14 PM

After I set up the tank I do absolutely nothing.. there is a piece of glass covering 80% of the tank top so humidity is maintained.. I mist once a week but I don't even have to if I don't want to. There is zero equipment other than a fan I built to recirculate air within the vivarium and the lights themselves. I feed the frogs fruit flies which I culture every 3-4 days. I have a hole in the bottom of the tank with a bulkhead+valve for drainage and otherwise there is zero maintenance.

Zoa · #7 10/23/2007, 06:18 PM

Great job Mike!

Corpus Callosum · #8 10/23/2007, 06:23 PM

Oh, and Scott, the tank with the variabilis (the green/yellow/black frogs in the middle pictures) is the 29 you 'donated to my cause' a few months ago

. Thanks to Larry for drilling it for me as well.

The 'isla solarte' pumilio (orange frogs, egg feeders and more territorial), are in a 40 breeder shown in the pic with T5's.

The large and rigid rosette like plants are bromeliads, epiphytes which holds water in between the leaves, and this is where the frogs breed and raise their tadpoles.

Thanks,

Neurotech · #9 10/23/2007, 07:12 PM

Really nice!

billsreef · #10 10/23/2007, 08:20 PM

Very nice set ups

Reef Junkie · #11 10/23/2007, 08:43 PM

Wait, I am friends with the owners of D&J reptiles and Doug has told me the maintenance required to keep those frogs alive, nevermind breeding. Those frogs are just as difficult or even harder to keep then a reef tank! Not nearly as expensive though.

Incredible, I love it!

imlocke · #12 10/23/2007, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Reef Junkie
Wait, I am friends with the owners of D&J reptiles and Doug has told me the maintenance required to keep those frogs alive, nevermind breeding. Those frogs are just as difficult or even harder to keep then a reef tank! Not nearly as expensive though.

Incredible, I love it!

Hmm, how come you say theres a lot required, and the guy with the frogs and breeding them says there isn't?

lol

The pictures totally make me want to try setting one up...but I don't know about culturing flies ... I don't know if I wanna see if I end up with a million flies in my house.. lol

Corpus Callosum · #13 10/23/2007, 10:40 PM

Some species are harder than others. Also breeding is another ball game, you could have very healthy frogs and they might not breed because they are not fond of the environment. I'm still pretty new to the hobby of darts, so I can't say if its easy or hard.. I just know I haven't given them any special care, and I've had some success breeding them. But I am guilty of having experience with plants and vivariums for many years..

The flies I culture are genetically altered and cannot fly. If they get loose they usually die within a day.. but if you are careful when feeding nothing gets loose, these 2 tanks are in my bedroom and I have never seen a fly anywhere in my room. The most effort I do is that I dust my fruit flies with vitamins, calcium, and a color enhancer when I feed. But I think a more important point is that you don't need the frogs to have the plants do good (they are free fertilizer though), so if you just want a nice low maintenance tank with beautiful plants and no frogs.. that's doable and very cheap!

This is the male when he is calling.. it sounds like an insect buzzing but it is not annoying..

The result..

Ready to come out..

Female transporting tadpole on her back to put him into the water in the bromeliad..

2 months later it ventures out..

Don't let the pictures deceive you. All the adult frogs pictured in this thread are no larger than 1.25" , thus the smaller food items required to culture for them.

Monkeyfish · #14 10/23/2007, 10:45 PM

Amazing. Very nice set-up.

imlocke · #15 10/23/2007, 10:51 PM

Hm, I'd be more interested in the frogs than the plants, though the plants do look pretty wild. That's pretty interesting that the flies can't...fly lol. Name doesn't seem to suit them anymore then. How exactly do you culture them?

Corpus Callosum · #16 10/23/2007, 11:36 PM

Culturing Drosophila sp. (more specifically I work with the species melanogaster) is pretty simple, I would say the only thing you have to worry about is contamination and mites.. but both are easy to get around if you do your reading. I buy premade dry media that you just add water to.. mostly because I'm too lazy to make my own.. but it's mostly just potato flakes and yeast. Then I add excelsior, the fibery material inside in these pics, to give them more surface area to pupate on and balance moisture.. you could use coffee filters even.. there are tons of methods.

Then you just add some flies from another culture and close it up.. since they can't fly they just look like ants moving around. They are like 3mm or so in length. A few days later you'll see small maggots in the media, which will pupate on the sides of the culture and the media, and hatch out in a few days. The culture lasts around a month or so, so I just make them every 2 weeks and it takes 10 minutes. 2-3 cultures could probably feed 10-20 frogs.. I only have 6 frogs but keep that many cultures as backup in case one crashes. But that is the 'downfall' of darts.. they require smaller food items which are not commercially available in local pet stores and you usually have to culture them yourself.. unless you go to a university and can use their flies, since melanogaster are commonly used in genetics research..

Fresh culture..

Two weeks later its producing well..

I like giving my animals variety.. so I also culture a few varieties of springtails (a type of soil arthropod that decompose dead leaves and are like 1-2mm in size).. but that's even easier than the flies..

imlocke · #17 10/23/2007, 11:47 PM

Hm, I may consider this in the future, but for now I'm positive my parents wouldn't let me do this in their house. Also I'm running out of room for tanks in my room with my two reef tanks...

Corpus Callosum · #18 10/24/2007, 12:05 AM

If you want the live tutorial, and are passing by exit 33 on the LIE, let me know.. more than welcome to drop by..

I moved back in with my parents for my last year since dorming was getting expensive and free rent is priceless.. they are somehow tolerating me..

imlocke · #19 10/24/2007, 12:38 AM

Haha, I think I might have to take a ride out some time to see

Julio · #20 10/24/2007, 12:26 PM

Hey Mike,

Looking good!!! keep up the great work, hope my tanks look as good as that some day.

Julio · #21 10/24/2007, 12:29 PM

what commercial brand media are you using for you cultures? i been using Eds for year, but i was considering trying something new like Josh's media.

purebullet417 · #22 10/24/2007, 01:40 PM

do you go to www.dendroboard.com i was close to setting one of these up but just couldnt do it. your looks very nice

Julio · #23 10/24/2007, 01:45 PM

darts are more addicting then reefing, just keep that in mind, i think we are gonna start a dart aholic anonymous fairly soon, this hobby is getting out of control.

Corpus Callosum · #24 10/24/2007, 02:03 PM

Yea I post on dendroboard under the same name there. I tried to form a local club for darts and vivariums but there were not enough hobbyists in new york as much as there are for reef keeping..

I use media from joshsfrogs, I order a lot of stuff from him and his prices are great.. also I think he adds cinnamon so his cultures smell better than most.

The part of the hobby I like the most aside from the plants is the aspect of genetic diversity.. some species have multiple color morphs because of allopatric speciation in their natural habitat when they might just be a few miles away from each population. As hobbyists, there is a network (tree walkers international, amphibian steward network) that attempts to maintain diversity within our own captive populations by tracking lineage and keeping high fitness within the captive population so that we don't accidentally selectively breed from the wild caught population.. this would eventually make a properly maintained captive population suitable for reinsertion to the wild since deforestation is a major concern in the habitat of most of these species..

unfortunately I have not seen much of these issues with genetics in captive populations brought to the saltwater community as far as I know.. and it is an important concern ..

billsreef · #25 10/24/2007, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Corpus Callosum
unfortunately I have not seen much of these issues with genetics in captive populations brought to the saltwater community as far as I know.. and it is an important concern ..

Too many of the "masses" as consumers that are driving the market in the same general way as the fresh water market that bring us things like Picasso Clowns as a high dollar collector's item to go along with such mutants such as flower horn's. It's a great way to make what would have been a cull a valuable commodity, but it is lousy way to maintain proper wild type genetics.