Dendro_Dave
Mad Scientist
- Messages
- 33
- Location
- Tulsa OK
Thats glowing calci sand siliconed in the cracks. A black light will come on for an hour or 2 at lights off to increase the glowing effect. After that red or blue moon lights will take over the night time lighting. May install red moonlights to light up the inside of the Hides on each side also.
Here is the roughed in layout. Little rock mosaic island will have the siliconed sand to add the glowing effect to parts of the floor area. The rest of the floor will be planted with various succulants.
I believe i can get moss to survive near the pond, the rest of the floor will probably be carpeted with tropical moss pillows also, but i expect them to die. A fan on a seconds timer will periodically come on and blow warm air down from the lights across the dry side to the humid side where another fan on seconds time will suck the air up and warm air from the lights along with it and blow it out of the tank. This should help to keep the humid side cooler and prevent a humid micro climate from forming on the floor of the dry side. Also the dry side floor slopes down to the wet side, so its closer to the lights (warmer) and will dry out faster.
Here is the dry hide cave. That corner is all styrofoam and rock, so that little humidity will be in that area, and is basically the only artificial part of the tank. The top cave part is removable for cleaning. The fan periodically blowing down from that area should take care of any residual humidity. A heat mat on back glass extending about half way across the tank will be the main heating element for that side of the tank. Depending on how that works out, i may add some heating elements, a lager or smaller mat...we'll see.
Here is the pond and humid hide side. The pond wiill have an air line to periodically produce bubbles and encourage drinking along with helping to oxygenate the water there. I've use this set up minus the air line in tropical vivaria, and water quality is good enough to support a few tropical fish, especially when the feature is planted with small aquatics like ricca, java fern, anubis, micro sword and some other very small leafed aquatic plant i have.
Under the stump on the left is the humid hide. Its currently lined with coir (coconut husks) and dried green moss thats held down with slate to keep the Leo from burrowing down to the false bottom area. I can add/substract moss above the slate as needed. The stump has also been made into a planter above that so i can add a low growing high light succulant up there.
Here is more progress, i still have more substrate to add, especially on the dry side, up to about an inch or so to the cave entrance. I may use the cocomats as a next to last layer except near the pond and just lay moss pillows up there to dry out. I'll hold them down with the glowing rock mosaic islands or other rocks, or use rocks glued ontop of pegs pushed through into the soil to hold them in place depending on how destructive the Leo is. If necessary i believe i can low down a layer of mess over the top that the moss will grow or atleast poke through and wont be visible, if so i could cover with some dry spagnum or whatever...we'll see some experimentation tweaking may be needed here depending on the Leo's behavior.
Overall its a pretty experimental setup i guess. Basically im going for a rocky desert scrub land that transitions to a nearly dried up stream or spring area... i think i can pull it off and as i found out from a guy on another forum it has been done with sucess before.
"A guy named Patrick Huddleson did something very similar with a 75 gallon tank. In The Herpetoculture of Leopard Geckos on page 20-21 Ron Tremper has a very short story about it and one small picture. From what it looks like, he has about a three inch layer of gravel for drainage, about a two inch layer of coir or peat (i cant tell which) for humidity and egg laying, then a layer of sandy soil that looks to start out around two inches in the front and slopes up to maybe five inches in the back. The background is large pieces of stone attached to the back, and the whole tank has large rocks arranged to created ledges and crevices. He also planted some desert plants. That tank housed two adults which bred and their eggs hatched in the vivarium. After two years when he "ended his experiment," the tank contained the original pair plus sixteen of their offspring ranging from hatchlings to adults. RT sums the story about the tank up by saying "It's all pretty fascinating stuff!" I just wish he would have devoted a little more of his book to examining that tank. This goes against the current trend in leopard gecko keeping however, mostly because people who try "naturalistic" vivaria dont do much more than dump in some sand"
I looked this up on amazon and was able to search inside the book and read the article for free
Very encouraging.So yep thats what we got so far, should be finished by a week except for adding some of the lights and heating equipment, oh and a Leo or 2. Probably going with a super snow or mack snow to compliment the decor...and they are my favs anyways.
