# planted whites tree frog terrarium



## Mikroberts (Nov 17, 2012)

Hey guys, I've ordered the plants I want to use for my whites tree frogs enclosure. I have also ordered culture kits to turn it into a bio-active substrate. I have a questions that may or may not prevent this from working. I have a drainage layer with a good 2 inches of hydro balls however I have noticed the water level starting to get to high. I've heard some one suggesting to put a mini heat mat underneath the hydro balls to heat up and evaporate the water level. My concerns are would this work? Will the heat effect the plants roots? Will the raising water vapour escape through the substrate or am I creating a sauna under my substrate? please help


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## Meefloaf (Mar 24, 2013)

i've never managed to get more than a cm in the bottom of my tank, whites dont need that much humidity wise (75% max ?) how often/much are you spraying the tank ? you dont want to over water the soil/plants


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## Mikroberts (Nov 17, 2012)

Well I spray it once in the morning and again at night purelly because I have the zoo med terrarium and with excellent ventilation comes humidity drops. I'm hoping real plants will keep in the moisture better than my plastic ones. But what happeneds to your CM of water. Surelly it has to go some where?


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## Meefloaf (Mar 24, 2013)

well, in the usual setup, you'd have a form of drainage pipe, either from the bottom, siphon tube etc, i built a little gully at the front using rock's, giving frogs access to somewhere to bathe and also i can drain if need be, however it either evaporates or has new water getting into it everyday.

your misting doesnt sound too bad, dunno why its filling so much


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## Mikroberts (Nov 17, 2012)

A gully by that do you mean an area that you've cut the hydro fleece moved any hydro balls so its glass at the bottom and blocked it off with stones however allowing the drainage layer to be the same layer as the gully water level. That sounds brilliant. You may have answered a questions I've been asking for months thank you so much.


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## Meefloaf (Mar 24, 2013)

frogfreak (Glenn) showed me this method and love it, as do my Leucs

http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/forums/amphibians/967813-couple-darfrog-housing-questions-2.html


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## strabo (Jun 6, 2013)

sound like you over spraying to me. I have natural substrate I find natural evaporation does the trick, I water when I feel the soil is drying out but that rarely happens, if you plant it out to much watering will rot the plants if there is not drainage. I have yet to spray mine at all to be honest they doing great 
they get enough warmth ect from the fluorescent light I have in there, plants are growing like mad so something is going right..


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## Ron Magpie (Oct 11, 2009)

My answer combines several of the ones above, lol; It definitely sounds as if you are spraying too much- either cut out one of the sprays each day, or just spray more lightly- you don't need to soak everything each time, just dampen it. White's don't need such a high humidity as some other frogs, so long as they have a water bowl that they can soak in when they need to. I do actually run my heatmats under the vivs- I find that the water in the drainage layer tends to spread the warmth a little more evenly, and as you suggest, that warmth does tend to help evaporation- which also helps to increase atmospheric humidity- so its a win/win! :2thumb:

If you still have flooding problems, you can sink a short piece of hose down to the base in one of the front corners- it's fairly easy to syphon out excess water. I almost never do this though, as with the stuff I've mentioned, I don't need to. At worst, I stop spraying at all for a few days, till the water level goes down.


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