Project Intro...

Introduction

 Hi, this blog is set up to follow two vivarium projects I have going on. The first is a Viv I already have, housing my first Gecko Heizenburg. Here's the set up...

At the moment I have a coco husk substrate, plastic plants (although the Bromeliad at the front is a live supermarket bought plant, bedded straight into the substrate, pot and all). At the back left there's a carved wooden half log full of Sphagnum moss that I keep extra damp, in the middle/foreground a fake rubber coated branch with fake vine twisted around it with Sphagnum moss dotted about. This increases humidity a little n also looks pretty cool :) Also in the back right I have a goat skull thing that creates another hidey hole.





On top I have the standard Exo-Terra canopy and I rotate sun glow and night glow bulbs day and night. I found the canopy would overheat after a few hours so have rigged a small PC fan extracting air through the top grill.
  I have plans to do a full re-build at the end of this month including all live tropical plants ( thinking of experimenting with some 'air plants'...), a fully Bio-active substrate including woodlice and other 'Janitor bug's', moss and stones and a small water feature leading down to a tiny pool at the front. I'l be doing a full step by step and will be blogged as I go :)

The second project is going to be a much larger version of this one, hopefully housed in the Exo-Terra X Tall Large Vivarium which should give me the floor space for a nice landscape/water area as well as height for rainforest style vertical growth. This is already turning into an ambitious project as I want to create a very natural environment, the water having live plants, micro bacteria, bugs and fish, the land being bio-active with woodlice, millipedes, crickets etc. To prepare for building this mini eco-system I have made two experiments...

This is the first. Collected on a trip out into the woods, an assortment of wood and plant matter teaming with woodlice and other bugs that will breakdown and compost organic waste, (including gecko poo :) ).  A good misting several times a day should keep things nice and damp for them. The larger bit of wood is going to be used in building an island in the new Viv, so I brushed off all the visible bugs into the planter using a paint brush and put the wood in the sun to dry out. 

The second experiment is to see if I can keep some of the local mini bugs i found in a local lake alive...

Hopefully the bugs (looked like swimming woodlice...) survived the trip home, if so I will try siphoning the water and replacing it and see if it will stay at least semi clear before any sort of filtration. 
  So the next blog will be the first Vivarium re-build at the end of the month, followed by an update on the two mini experiments along with first plans on the big build. Any comments, advice very welcome and I will try to answer any questions :)