Vivarium

vi·var·i·um (v

-vâr

m) n. pl. vi·var·i·ums or vi·var·i·a (-

)

A place, especially an indoor enclosure, for keeping and raising living animals and plants under natural conditions for observation or research.

[Latin vvrium, from neuter of vvrius, of living creatures, from vvus, alive. See vivify.]

Designer: David Pickering

The tank:

The tank is a 29 gallon high all glass aquarium, with a solid plastic/glass lid. I added a set of three PC fans blowing INWARD and provided exhaust by cutting a hole in the rear section of plastic on the top and gluing screen to the under side. I had the fan pulling air out of the tank, but the temperature dropped 5 degrees and the humidity came up 10 % when I reversed the fans.

Lighting:

I have a standard aquarium light in the hood, and a plant light mounted inside the tank to allow the UVB to reach the plants and animals.

The substrate:

The substrate is a custom mix of fir bark, coco chips and fiber, sphagnum peat moss, charcoal and pea-sized river rock. This is placed over a two inch deep mixture of charcoal and pea gravel, which covers the bed of charcoal lining the basic egg crate on PVC false bottom.

Water features:

I constructed a misting system with lawn sprinkler switches, a garden sprayer, mini-heads, and ¼” tubing. There is a fogger set up with the fog output coming up from the substrate. All lighting, fogging, and misting is controlled by independent timers. The lights are on a 12/12 cycle, the fogger is on 15 minutes of every hour, and the auto-mister is on 5 minutes every 4 hours. The waterfall/stream and the fans run 24/7. The fogger is constructed using an ultrasonic humidifier (this is an old one, but the Sunbeam model 696 will work), 2” PVC, an adapter to drop that down to 1” for vinyl tubing, and a rigid 2 piece-1” PVC output. The output of the PVC is wrapped with vinyl coated screen and buried under ground at a 10º angle. There are a couple of small holes drilled in the low end to allow water build up to drain.

The stream is custom made using aquarium safe 100% pure silicone mixed with a course sand and crushed river rock. This mixture was pressed into an aluminum foil mold of the bending river. The waterfall was hand-made by covering a 2 liter coke bottle with “Great Stuff” expanding foam and then coating that with the same mixture used for the stream. Two holes were cut in the false bottom, one at each end of the tank. These were used for the waterfall pump and the reservoir well. The well was constructed using the perforated bottom half of a 2 gallon, well washed, bleach bottle. This was then covered with a blue A/C filter material for color and added filtration. The pump was placed inside a 3” plant pot that touches the bottom of the tank. That pot is surrounded by the top half of a two liter bottle to prevent a landslide if the pot is removed. The pump is wrapped with a bio filter poly bag and then wrapped with the same A/C filter screen used in the well to help prevent clogging. The entire assembly, or just the pump can easily be removed for cleaning with out disturbing the vivarium. The stream flows from the waterfall to the well.

The Plants:

The centerpiece plant is a 15” high Ficus benjamina. I also have a couple of Hypoestes taeniata (freckle face or pink polka dot plant), two Codiaeum variegatum (crotons), a Pilea involucrata (that’s the one with the wrinkled leaves), one Schefflera aboricola and some moss that I collected in the woods.

The inhabitants:

The vivarium is inhabited by 2.1 Agalychnis callidryas (red eyed tree frogs) and two (hopefully 1.1) Phelsuma v-nigra (day geckos).