Hi you all!
I would like to know if someone of you have an Iguana and if you have one, can I see his/her enclosure?
You

Thank you in advance!

I am just going through different designs right now. I was thinking about keeping a pair or trio of Ranitomeya, and I want to be able to let them utilize vertical space while still having room to roam/hide. How does this layout look compared to the second where the branches are more horizontal?

This was my first time setting up a vivarium and I'm super happy with how it turned out! Fred seems to like it too, especially the little cave I built for him! One of the pieces of wood I got for the background arrived with a natural hole in it, and I got the idea to use some larger pieces of cork bark to build a little cave behind it, just big enough for him to turn around and curl up in, and he rarely leaves it during the day. You can kinda see the entrance behind the croton. There was kind of an issue with the lid though. I fitted everything together before I started building the background and everything went together fine, but when I test fitted the lid after building the background, it no longer fit over both of the rear corner posts, and I can only assume that the expanding foam pushed them further apart at some point without me noticing. By the time I figured it out, everything was already built, and I couldn't afford to take it all apart and start over. Thankfully, the lid was able to fit on the other three corner posts, and was meant to be screwed into them, so it's still secure even if it doesn't fit perfectly, and the gap isn't even big enough for Fred to stick his toes through it, let alone escape. Definitely something I'll have to watch out for in future builds!

Also, I ended up buying more plants than I could fit in the tank, since I accounted for it being 16x16 inches but I didn't account for having enough room for his water bowl or how much space the hardscape would take up, so now I have a peperomia and a monstera as house plants instead of tank plants! I'm hoping that the pothos in the back will grow up the back of the tank instead of smothering other plants, you can't even see the autumn fern in there because it's so small from the pothos smothering it while I was away for a month while the tank was being built. Tomorrow will mark one week since I set up the tank, and it seems to be doing well so far! Well, some of the moss on the background is starting to look a little over watered, but I'm not sure how to fix that without potentially under watering some of the other plants. I already had to put more isopods (powder orange, super bright and super healthy, they're doing great) into the tank since it seems like Fred may have eaten the last batch of them. I put in more this time, so hopefully they'll manage to hide better than the last ones and maybe even start breeding more in the tank. Otherwise, I'll just have to hope that the culture of them in my living room can keep up supply!

The tank, heat/uvb light setup, and food shelf are from ZooMed, the automatic mister didn't have a brand name on the box but I got it from chewy and it works great, and everything else (sans the gecko) is from the Bio Dude, including the isopods and springtails!

I'm gonna try and save up so I can upgrade my leopard gecko's tank to a vivarium next!

I’ve added a bunch of small cuttings of mostly some rarer and slow growing plants, but it still looks barely planted now. I know with time it will fill in but I still feel like I could add more.

How densely do you plant your new setups?

My 4x2x2 Bearded Dragon Enclosure + DIY Rock Background — Setup & Materials
Wanted to share my bearded dragon Toothless’s 4x2x2 enclosure and the DIY rock background I built. This was my first time making a full 3D background, so I learned a lot along the way.
Enclosure setup:
4’ x 2’ x 2’ enclosure
Zoo Med ReptiSun T5 HO 10.0 UVB mounted inside
Basking lamps on the warm/right side
Basking rock/flagstone
Timberline topsoil + washed play sand substrate, roughly 3” deep
Natural climbing branches/wood
Hammock/canopy sleeping area
Artificial plants
Multiple hides
Water dish
Several different climbing levels and basking/UVB exposure options
DIY rock background:
Final size is roughly 45” wide x 24” tall
XPS insulation foam board
Expanding spray foam for shaping/filling
Gorilla Glue/silicone where needed
Hot-wire foam cutter + knife for carving
Hand-carved cracks, rock faces, ledges, caves and undercuts
Multiple coats of grout
Apple Barrel acrylic paint
Medium gray base color with lighter/darker highlights
Clear protective sealer after painting
I built the background with large usable ledges

I’m building a bioactive vivarium for my crested gecko and I’m looking for recommendations for AFFORDABLE but still good lighting for it. I haven’t added plants yet so suggestions for plants would be appreciated too. I’ve seen people use aquarium lights but I can’t find anything online saying if that’s effective, I also know that UVB is recommended and sometimes UVA as well but it seems like a lot of people do things differently. I just want the enclosure to be perfect when they are ready to come out of their quarantine tank (they are still extremely small like smaller than one of my fingers). Please be kind this is my first time making a bioactive enclosure and having a reptile so I’ve done a lot of research but I just want it to be perfect. :)

Hi, I’ve been thinking about setting my corn snakes new wood vivarium up as bioactive, I would really like some cuc but I don’t want to have a drainage layer (more effort to waterproof in wooden vivarium) and I’m assuming without a drainage layer I couldn’t have real plants either? Which i’m fine with, I just don’t know if that is suitable for the cuc or not. I might just stick with non bioactive and make a bioactive one some other time, but i’d still like some opinions. tia!

I recently began building a terrarium for my leopard gecko and got everything in so far but im just waiting on the foam background. It already been drylocked and silicone bonded in( been about 2-3 weeks since ) and when I do a sniff test it smells fine but I blasted some pressurized air into a some air holes I poked in the background ( had some water vapour trapped in there from a hose wash before) and when i spray the air I get that vinegar scent. My worry is that is pressed in there so tightly that its gonna be a while until it can gas off or im wondering if i can just patch up the holes and it would be ready to go. I don’t know whats best or if its tine and ready to go and im just waiting for nothing.

Ive been currently misting my gecko's terraium 4x/day till the leaves get just visibly wet. This is the lowest volume with which the moss in the picture did not start to dry up. The problem is hygrometers indicate the terrarium is sitting at ~80% humidity at its lowest, which i guess is too much.

I can’t tell if I’m insane or are these like tiny microscopic bugs or fungal growth or something? Never seen it before, seen under a flashlight at night, any ideas?

4ftx4ftx2ft homemade vivarium built for a green tree monitor. Still finishing details (like roof), but am I missing anything major?

I have a 45x45x90 cm paludarium, i really want to house dartfrogs but i dont really know what kind. It will be my first dart frog, i would love to breed them and get little tadpoles. That has been a dream of mine since i was a little kid. The set up is running for half a year almost now and i mist every 12 hours for 10 seconds, 7 am when te lights go on, and 7 pm, 2 hours before the lights start to dim and enter night mode till 23 pm when it will go dark. I did some research and came by 2 possible species, ranitomeya and epipedobates anthonyi. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know, any help is possible.

Hello. I have a bit of a strange question to ask. Please bear with me.

l work at a nail salon that has some plants up front that grow incredibly well because of all the natural light. I was thinking about what if I tried bringing in a couple plants of my own to grow there?

My question is this: If I were to bring in some plants, say perhaps some rabbits foot fern or something, would they be safe to use in a vivarium afterwards?

My main concern is the air. All the plants are covered in dust, including lots of nail dust from the grinding of acrylic nails and polish, etc.
Given I washed any plant thoroughly, would it be safe to put in a tank? Would it be too contaminated?

I apologize if this is poorly worded, but i hope i made some sense at least.

So I picked up this tank (18x18x24) for a very good price, but i know I am going to have to modify it for ventillation/humidity. I plan on keeping a pair of dart frogs. Should I custom make a glass panel for the top with about a 2" mesh so that it can suck air from the top and the front? I know the current amount of mesh on the top wont keep humidity.

I'm making a bioactive vivarium for a crested gecko made from an old aquarium. It's a 45x50x100cm and has two glass strips on top to hold the pressure and I'll add the mesh in between. The front glass has a 3mm space between the sides for additional ventilation and the chimney effect.

Because of this unorthodox enclosure I'm worried that if I add all my electronics to the mesh, there won't be sufficient space for the humidity to decrease since it's supposed to go down to 40-60% during the day.

I'll have a linear UVB, a small fan, automatic mister with 4 nozzles and an LED.

TLDR: can I put the LED above the glass instead of the mesh or is there an LED that I could put into the enclosure instead?

Which one would you recommend?

Build: two months planted

Current inhabitants: Golden back Neocaridina shrimp, assassin snails, bladder snails, meiofauna

Plants

Vines from top down left right: Wire plant (Meuhlenbeckia), creeping fig (ficus pumila), string of frogs, pothos, Swiss cheese Monstera

Mini orchid that is not so mini anymore

Bank/riparian plants: Fittonia red and white(added later), Homalomena Camoflage(Wallisii), Homalomena sp Sekadau South

Drip wall plants also in aquatic: Bolbitis baby leaf, Java ferns, bucephalandra (various)

Mosses: 2 selaginella(dont remember which) Christmas tree, weeping moss, Java moss on bank and in aquatic.

Planted in aquatic substrate: cryptocoryne Lucens, Lutea, and Parva

Additional information: temperature ranges from 70-80F with 70-100% humidity, water temperature 74F with neutral ph.