Hey everyone, I just finished constructing a natural vivarium that I hope to keep a pair of Uroplatus Phantasticus (Satanic Leaf-tail) in. It is a 29 gallon tank with a false bottom and what not. I am looking for suggestions on how I can make this a little better and also comments if you have any before I put the water into the vivarium. I have a screen top that I will be covering a lot with plexiglass and a uvb fluoresent bulb as well.
Right now I have a substrate made up of peat moss, potting soil and coconut fibre/chunks in there. I have no idea what the ratio I used was I just kinda threw it all in a rubbermaid and mixed it together and added what I thought would work well. Here are some pics and descriptions of what's going on in em.
Here is a side view showing most of the vivarium.
Here is a different angle that shows a plant dish full of sphagnum moss that I plan to wet down once I get the water in and start testing out the environment and such. It shows some dead leaves I grabbed from a provincial park off the ground. The live, soon to be dead, branches are there for more stuff for the geckos to climb as they may not always be happy with the live plants.
The piece of cork bark here will have water running down centered in the canal looking part. I was having troubles at first keeping the water from pooling up by the substrate going into it's draining area so I layered up some pieces of the false bottom I used to the substrate level to prevent the substrate from finding it's way under where the water falls through. I placed the pump on the opposite side of the tank from the waterfall so the water in the reservoir moves a lot better. I assure you my clothes aren't actually in the tank.
Here is a shot of the whole vivarium. The lighting in the room was bad and I found it hard to get a decent shot. This also shows the false bottom. The layers are substrate, fiberglass window screening, polywool filter fluff, the egg crate and then the reservoir.
Thanks for looking.
Mike
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