Starphire glass

[otis07]

Does anyone here have personal experience with this glass?
I am redoing my grandis day gecko tank and would really love for all the plants not to die, and having a lid that holds in the humidity would really help with this. On glasscages.com they have some thats low in iron and some thats not and the latter is almost 3x as much money. Does anyone know the difference? I just need something that will allow a majority of the UVB to go through. Any help is appriciated, thanks!

 

[Haroldo]

Does anyone here have personal experience with this glass?
I am redoing my grandis day gecko tank and would really love for all the plants not to die, and having a lid that holds in the humidity would really help with this. On glasscages.com they have some thats low in iron and some thats not and the latter is almost 3x as much money. Does anyone know the difference? I just need something that will allow a majority of the UVB to go through. Any help is appriciated, thanks!

Don't have any personal experience with starphire glass, but I do with Twin Oaks (glasscages.com), regular plate glass, Phelsuma, and tank building in general. Anything between the UV source (Sun or bulb) is going to filter out some of the "potency". I would make a portion of the top of your cage screen, so you can have most of the UV pass through, as well as some ventilation for the geckos. Otherwise, you'd need to look at OP-4 which is specially designed acrylic that allows for UV transmission, but won't do much in way of allowing for ventilation. As far as I know, no one designs a plate glass product with UV transmission in mind.

What kind of plants were you using before? I think the standard is some species of Sansiviera (mother-in-law tongue) for day geckos. Cheap, hardy and typically grows somewhat slowly.

 

[otis07]

Thanks for the reply Haroldo, I will look into OP-4.

Heres the deal, I am a dart frog person so I like to make my tanks unnecessarily densly planted. I have my grandis in a 45 high now and he is getting moved to a 20 high so I want to make sure he has plenty of spots to hide. I am going to have tillandsia's, ficus pumila, maidenhair ferns, devils ivy, peace lily, tons of neoregalia (hand drill and cork bark method), ricca, wandering jew, prayer plant, snake plant, spider plant, african violet...those are just a few I have now, but I am ordering a huge amount of plants soon to plant a few other dart tanks so I will probably add a bunch of clippings and see how they do.

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[Haroldo]

Thanks for the reply Haroldo, I will look into OP-4.

Heres the deal, I am a dart frog person so I like to make my tanks unnecessarily densly planted. I have my grandis in a 45 high now and he is getting moved to a 20 high so I want to make sure he has plenty of spots to hide. I am going to have tillandsia's, ficus pumila, maidenhair ferns, devils ivy, peace lily, tons of neoregalia (hand drill and cork bark method), ricca, wandering jew, prayer plant, snake plant, spider plant, african violet...those are just a few I have now, but I am ordering a huge amount of plants soon to plant a few other dart tanks so I will probably add a bunch of clippings and see how they do.

Thanks so much for your help!

I thought your screenname looked familiar...you're over on Dendro as well. (Same name as here over there).

Honestly, with a gecko this large, ficus pumila, maidenhair ferns and alot of the smaller neos will get outright destroyed. Not to mention snake plants are succulents and will be basically ad odds with a minimally ventilated tropical tank. Unfortunately Phelsuma just don't do well long-term in poorly ventilated tanks. I keep several dart frogs too, so I can understand the temptation to make similar vivs. Unfortunately, it's not very appropriate in this case...

Oh, and I forgot to mention OP-4 runs several times what Starphire costs per sqft (which is why I recommended partially screened top), so if price is a concern, your costs are going to skyrocket! I keep a variety of Phelsuma (with a scale of environmental needs) and the tanks I've custom made have about 75% of the top open for ventilation. Regular misting does wonders for cages that are appropriately ventilated, but need humidity .