New Vivarium Build (Help Me Inhabit It)

LongPig

LongPig

New member
I have a 36" x 18" x 36" Exo Terra Vivarium that I'm nearly ready to plant. Installing a Mist King system this weekend. I've got a substrate consisting of a 3" layer of Hydroballs with a 3" to 4" layer of New England Herpetoculture mix on top of that. With this substrate and the walls being mainly coir, I'm expecting humidity of around 70% to 90%. I have a basking area than reaches 90 degrees with a temperature gradient of between 75 degrees and 80 degrees ambient. Tank is lit with four T5 HO bulbs (two ZooMed 5.0's and two Coralife 6500K's). With the size of the enclosure I was thinking either a pair of Grandis or a smaller species I can house as a group. I am open to suggestions. The enclosure will be heavily planted and I was thinking of a misting schedule of 15 seconds eight times a day. Please feel free to leave me any comments/criticisms you may have. Thanks in advance!

68FDFA72-2D33-4391-B830-F41A674B7FDD-2635-0000024F1E7948EF_zps21e96f6a.jpg
 
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Ingo

New member
Looks nice, but with all these rough surfaces not much like a Phelsuma tank. Also I would say, this still is a bit too small for grandis (I do keep and breed this species since 29 years now). Spontaneously I would heavily plant it and then keep Holaspis, Takydromus or Opheodrys in it.
Of course, there also are plenty other species to choose form.

cheers

Ingo
 
LongPig

LongPig

New member
Hey Ingo thanks for your reply. The enclosure will be heavily planted before introducing any animals. The walls are actually all soft coco fiber and foam if that's what you were thinking looks "rough". As to size of the enclosure, I'd really like to stick to Phelsuma species so if you have suggestions as to a smaller animal that would do well in a three foot by three foot enclosure it would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Ingo

New member
Hi,
again, Phelsuma tend to avoid both, soft and rough surfaces for climbing. Thus any Phelsuma wold hardly use the nice walls.
However, adding lots of Bamboo sticks would still suffice as climbing surfaces for many of the smaller Phelsuma. What about klemmeri? Very nice, brightly coloured, more social than most Phelsuma. You can even leave the Babies in the parents tank and/or keep several females together with one male.
The only Phelsuma I can imagine to use the Rock backwalls and Kork for climbing is P. barbouri, which in general needs a more rocky setup and less branches to climb on.
 
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JJenkins

New member
Ingo, what type of background would you recommend for the smaller species of phelsuma like laticauda or quadriocellata? I am setting up a 45 cm x 45 cm x 70 cm exo-terra for a breeding pair, and I had planned to use some cork backgrounds (with attached cork rounds for vertical hides) to mount air plants. This is bad news because I was really excited how the vivarium was going to look with some natural cork bark in there.
 
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Ingo

New member
JJenkins said:
Ingo, what type of background would you recommend for the smaller species of phelsuma like laticauda or quadriocellata? I am setting up a 45 cm x 45 cm x 70 cm exo-terra for a breeding pair, and I had planned to use some cork backgrounds (with attached cork rounds for vertical hides) to mount air plants. This is bad news because I was really excited how the vivarium was going to look with some natural cork bark in there.
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I recommend Bamboo backwalls.

You can either use fake ones
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NjYzWDEwMjQ=/z/I2gAAOxyHltSSauX/$T2eC16RHJHkFFmPLLS)UBSS,u(!fYw~~48_20.JPG

Or construct sth yourself
dxtu-b2-8efb.jpg


You may also replace bamboo by branches with smooth or no bark
Such surfaces should also be present within the volume of the enclosure

dxtu-b3-d9fc.jpg
 
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JJenkins

New member
Great enclosures Ingo. Thanks for the info.

Do you have a page where you have pics of your other gecko enclosures? I need some ideas--esp. for Gekko species like badenii and vittatus.

Did you ever finish that book on the Gekko genus by the way?

Sorry I don't mean to hijack this thread.
 
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Ingo

New member
Hi,

no, I do not have a dedicated website.
With respect to the gecko book: The manuscript is ready and revised. Some highly wanted pics are still missing and thus I could not convince my editor to finish it this year.
However; I doubt, we will manage to get all the pics we would love to have. Some species seem to be quite elusive when it comes to meet photographers.
I am a bit annoyed and hope for 2014.
When I started writing the book, it covered 30 Gekko species, which was all, what was known to science so far.
In the meantime I had to expand at least the short species summaries a lot to cover all 50 species which are known now. And the story is still ongoing.
 
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JJenkins

New member
Sorry to hear of those troubles. Please let us all know if it gets published; if not in English, hopefully I can get an e-copy and translate it.
 
LongPig

LongPig

New member
GiantDayGecko.com said:
Of course my opinion is a bit bias but I would vote for crimson GRANDIS to inhabit your new vivarium.

By the way AWESOME enclosures Ingo!!!

Cheers, Jon
Giant Day Geckos - Captive bred Phelsuma since 1993!
E-mail: giantdaygecko@aol.com
Group Moderator
Phelsuma grandis- Giant Day Gecko Group - Geckos Unlimited
Click to expand...
I actually bought a yearling pair of crimsons and as Ingo stated, they hate the cage. They stay on the walls and on the Sanseveria only. I'm probably going to be selling them and going in a different direction. Probably dart frogs.

Ingo said:
Thank you...if you want to see more, check this out:
http://www.geckosunlimited.com/community/geckos-herps-news-media/68851-my-geckos-homestory-tv.html
Click to expand...
Great videoi Ingo!
 
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