Vivaria can vary greatly in design, shape, size and technical installation. This website will deal with naturalistic vivaria that are designed to mimic a tropical rain forests in the most accurate way. This design makes it possible to house both the most beautifull and interesting plants in the world, like orchids and bromeliads and the most astonishing frogs: the poison frogs.
It takes experience and knowledge to produce a problem free tropical rainforest vivarium. One way to come to such a result is given on this website and it will guide you through the main topics for a good and practically maintenance free vivarium.
There are easier and cheaper ways to grow orchids and bromeliads or to keep poison-frogs. The whole installation of a reasonable size for 10 frogs and a number of plants will cost more than 1000 US$ of EUR, even while making it yourself. Therefore proper preparation, study and a good fall-back in materials and installation is required. Unfortunately a number of vivaria are created by trial and error with a number of wasted poison frogs as a result. Animals in general but the endangered poison frogs in particular are too precious for this.
My first vivarium was build and started with plants in October 2000. The rest of the story you can read in the journal on this website.
My second large vivarium
This vivarium was fully self designed and build in winter 2002 - till summer 2003. Due to the size it was a technological challenge. The sizes are 110 cm ( 44 inch ) wide, 100 cm ( 40 inch ) deep and 180 cm ( 6 foot ) high, therefore the size will be 2 Cubic Metre or 450 Gallon. The size does not make this a simple construction. Heating, lighting, ventilation is very different from a small size vivarium and has to be scaled up to this size, using the right scaling parameters.
Some figures :
14 36 Watt PL lamps with special light reflector to reach enough light on the floor to keep plants there too.
3 pumps to manage the water circulation, rain system etc.
Double glazing for the front window to prevent cold draft across the front window.
a 1000 W heater to create the required air temperature in the vivarium quickly enough.
a 100 Cubic meter hour ventilator to provide cooling for the lamps and circulation to prevent fogging and
8 different timers to operate light, ventilation, water fall, water acros the backwall, rain system, temperature control and air heating, bottom and water heating.
The result can be observed below :
My large vivarium in November 2004
My large vivarium in October 2003
My large vivarium just ready and planted in July 2003
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