Newest orchid heavy vivarium!

[FroggyKnight]

Hi all, I though I should share my newest dart frog viv with you guys since it's so orchid heavy and full of minis. It's a 20 gallon aquarium that I converted to be a front opening, vertical vivarium. The background is mostly virgin cork slabs with a few tubes. After the holidays, I'm planning on adding a few more micro-mini orchids such as Pleurothallis alata and Lepanthes telipogoniflora, but I would love suggestions from you guys. I may end up removing the Scaph. and replacing it with something with shorter spike.

The orchids:
Scaphosepalum breve 'yellow'
Porroglossum hystrix
Restrepia iris
Masdevallia nidifica
Platystele argentosa
Pleurothallis sp. 'Belize'
Pleurothallis grobyi 'small form'

Other plants:
Rhaphidophora pachyphylla
Philodendron brandtianum
Philodendron verrucosum
Peperomia prostrata
Peperomia sp. 'Colombia'
Pilea cadierei (aluminum plant)
Selaginella uncinata
Cryptanthus bivittatus
pyrrosia serpens

Full tank shot


Upper part of the tank


One of my favorite plants in the tank, my Porroglossum hystrix


One of the four Ranitomeya fantastica 'Lowland' that call this tank home. This pic was taken when it was still in quarantine.

I will be updating this thread routinely as the tank grows in

[snowflake311]

That frog has an awesome home. I love this. I have planted fish tanks. seeing this gives me ideas for my many empty tanks. I was a crazy fish lady for years and collected tank.

[Leafmite]

Wow, that is really nice. We have two hamsters currently occupying the two fish tanks but someday, I plan to use them to make something like this.

[FroggyKnight]

Originally Posted by snowflake311

That frog has an awesome home. I love this. I have planted fish tanks. seeing this gives me ideas for my many empty tanks. I was a crazy fish lady for years and collected tank.

Thank you! I have a few display vivariums around the house, but this is my only one with a focus on orchids. If your interested in building a vivarium, it is surprisingly easy and super fun. It is a lot like designing a low tech planted tank, actually. All you need are some lights and just let the plants grow, you don't even feed the plants! I used to have a planted tank and I'm thinking of getting back into it, but I think my hands are pretty full right now with my geckos, frogs, uromastyx lizards and reef tanks! My friends tell me I should open my house as a zoo

Originally Posted by Leafmite

Wow, that is really nice. We have two hamsters currently occupying the two fish tanks but someday, I plan to use them to make something like this.

Thank you for the kind words, I'm really happy with how this one turned out and it will only look better as it grows in. I spread moss and fern spores all over the cork and hopefully some cool stuff will pop up in a few months.

[WhiteRabbit]

Wow! Looks great!

[FroggyKnight]

This is over due for an update! The moss mix I added has started to grow nicely and various ferns, mosses and what I think is a gesneriad have all popped up. The Restrepia iris bloomed like crazy but it's now focusing more on putting out new growth instead. Both the Porroglossum and Scaphosepalum are in spike and hopefully will be blooming soon. The Pleuro. grobyi has started to go crazy with flowers and has two more spikes, besides the one already open. The Platystele has pushed out a bunch of new growth and the Masdevallia should put on a very nice show when it decides to flower. That Masde. is getting huge fast!

The frogs have been doing great, however they are camera shy. I think they've begun courting and I wouldn't be surprised if I find eggs any day now.

Here as some updated pics of the tank! I included a US quarter is some of the photos to give it a better sense of scale.









And lastly, a froggy before he ran away from the big scary camera!

[Tindomul]

Everything in that tank, plants, animal look beautiful! Great job.

[Amyzes]

This is really impressive!

[Roey.P.]

Very impressive!

[RosieC]

Looking great. Wonderful!