First, let me announce that this weekend we will be working with the members of the Pittsburgh Area Planted Aquarium Society (PAPAS) to setup a couple aqua-scaped aquariums for folks interested in keeping live planted aquariums. For those folks who really hated to see Tim's display tank go, this should come as good news. More on that as it develops.

Currently, we also have two new frog display tanks at the store. One tank will house our Dendrobates leucomelas (Bumble Bee Poison Dart Frogs) which we have for sale - in the photo above, it is the larger tank on the left. The second tank will house our Vietnamese Mossy Frog. Currently, the Mossy Frog is not for sale, as I am hoping to track down several more and start a breeding colony of them. These tanks help to show the great variety in setups you can use for various reptiles and amphibians.

A little more info on the Mossy Frog tank... This tank is a fairly simple setup (and subsequently, fairly inexpensive. The tank itself is actually a 10 gallon aquarium - it actually even has one side with several cracks, so it works well as a tank to use for something other than fish. I turned the tank on its side and stood it up with the open top facing forward, and then siliconed a piece of glass in across the bottom of the opening to allow the tank to hold some small amount of water. Next, I constructed a container to bury in the substrate to hold more water as well as a small Repti-Flo pump. I covered that with Hydro-Balls (ZooMed's new hydroton pebbles that are available at the store), then a layer of filter floss, then a layer of Eco Earth, followed lastly by a mat of moss that we had grown at the store. Then I took a piece of cork bark and drilled a small hole towards the top, and then ran a hose from the pump up to that hole. This gives the nice effect of water constantly cascading down the cork bark, as well as dripping off the leaves of the pothos ivy placed in the tank. Also in the tank are some plant trimmings from the other frog tank, and an Anubias barteri. The cork bark needs a bit more trimming to keep the mossy frog from constantly hiding behind it, but the bark is currently secured in place by some velcro (which works better in my opinion than permanently securing the cork bark with silicone). Alternative to the cork bark, you could run a setup with the Exo-Terra terrarium and run a water feature down the styrofoam background included with those terrariums.

I have a few more photos of these tanks, just view the comments for this post to see them. (I didn't want to clutter up the main page too much with them).

Note: I am also trying out letting folks post comments to news posts here, so if you have questions or comments about this stuff, feel free to post a comment.

- Bill