Start of my new Viv for amazon tree boa

[jossh27]

Well I'm trying again. Nearly a year ago i made a nice little viv with a waterfall for future dartfrog inhabitants... After about a week a divider wall started to leak and destroyed everything. I was so mad, i let all the plants die and scrapped the project(still no frogs). This time i went basic with no waterfall, just plants. Still have to add some perches ,lighting and background and eventually a Amazon tree boa.

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k109/Josh_Wilhelm/20170209_184742_zpsvdmwwbp5.jpg (http://s86.photobucket.com/user/Josh_Wilhelm/media/20170209_184742_zpsvdmwwbp5.jpg.html)

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k109/Josh_Wilhelm/20170209_184025_zps8vhu62wl.jpg (http://s86.photobucket.com/user/Josh_Wilhelm/media/20170209_184025_zps8vhu62wl.jpg.html)

[trailblazer295]

Looks good, I have no advice as I've killed lots of plants in my attempt to have a planted viv lol

[jossh27]

Looks good, I have no advice as I've killed lots of plants in my attempt to have a planted viv lol

I'm really trying to avoid that. Only plant I've ever kept alive was sole sort of spider plant. Id water it like once a month... Indestructible plant lol

[Cyclops]

Awesome looking, can't wait until you have in tree boa in there!

[TRD]

There are some species of succulents that require no water, no fertilizer or any fertile ground as such, no wind, no nothing really except bright light... survive temp ranges from -10 to +35 C and grow about a cm in a decade.

Actually you can only kill them by caring for them and plunging some water on their head.

If all else fails... ;D

What normal soft leaved plants need most is just 2 basics...
1- Bright light giving a spectrum for photosyntesis
2- Fertilizer
Edit: 3- And water of course (but that should be obvious)

You can drop all the perfect ground and fertilizer in a vivarium, but if the plant can't properly photosynthesize, it is useless and it will eventually die.

A normal 60W light bulb with a color temp of around 6-6.5K is about as bright as a shadow is on a summer day. Once you know that you realize just how bright a light should be for plants that require full or partial sunshine. Of course there are specialized grow light giving off a huge purple hue which to the human eye seems to be far less bright, but heck, you do not want that in your vivarium :)

If you google images of "photosynthesis color response" you'll see the color spectrum plants desire. You see high peaks in blues and reds. Now if you want to make the light pleasurable to look at (ie- resembling sunshine) you need it either to be white or slightly warmer to yellow. To attain those high peaks in blues and reds with the appropriate other colors, you'll get intensely bright white light as a result. Hence LED lighting is so popular because it can in fact create very intense light over shorter distances at a reasonable price, so you can actually grow plants in a room which is in fact dark without the use of the old (and big, expensive, energy sucking) grow lamps.

PS. I'm dutch, I now keep my fingers crossed that the police isn't going to knock on my door asking questions about growing plants indoors in a dark room.

[jossh27]

I read up on lighting in a dartgrog forum and know the light needs to be at least 5000k. 6500kelvin is peak daytime light if i recall. I found a local store that specializes in led lighting I'm going to check out tomorrow. I'm also going to add Springtails and pill bugs to the soil... Possibly some small earthworms too to help soil conditions.