I’ve been keeping aquariums since I was seven or eight-years old. From my early days as an aquarist, I enjoyed creating unique habitats for the fish and other creatures that I caught in nearby creeks or was able to buy with my lawn mowing money at a local aquarium shop.
Fast forward to today and I still love creating miniature ecosystems, but my aquariums have become more sophisticated: planted tanks with high tech lighting and injected carbon dioxide, reef ecosystems with elaborate filtration systems and propagated corals.
Awhile back I came across a used 90-gallon tank and was trying to decide what I should do with it. I thought of turning it into a planted tank and even possibly a reef aquarium, but in the end I decided to do something completely different, something much simpler to maintain. I decided to create a vivarium. A vivarium is basically a miniature ecosystem for housing small creatures. In our case, it’s a terrarium designed for poison dart frogs.
Not a lot of elaborate equipment was required for its construction. I used supplies I picked up at a local hardware store and from old aquarium equipment I had on hand. I constructed the base out of egg crating/nylon screen, and with construction foam and rubber pond liner created a small stream that runs down the middle. I used a special, soilless substrate, the components which are easily found online and acquired live plants from several sources: a friend’s business, MiniWaters (http://miniwaters.fish/ ), based out of Duluth, Minnesota, plants from fellow hobbyists and some I’ve grown myself. The two frogs came from another friend and the supplies to feed the frog from an online supplier.
Like having any pet or indoor plant, some basic care is required. Our vivarium is like having a garden in a glass box. I have a fogger that turns on twice a day (to help keep the humidity elevated), I feed the frogs 2-3 times per week and mist the plants every other day. The fun part is tinkering with our miniature ecosystem. Like any garden, some plants will need to be pruned or moved to a different location (higher vs lower) to improve growth, and it’s always fun to add a new plant to the collection.
An orchid species that likes the high humidity of a terrarium or vivarium called Oncidium velutinum
The vivarium sits in an interior wall of our basement, right behind my wife’s at home work station. She reports hearing the frogs singing occasionally, and when she gets tired of looking at her computer screen, all she needs to do is turn around and to get a glimpse of nature. It was the perfect project during COVID 19 with more days than usual at home.
