Tank Set Up

I have received several emails asking me various detailsabout the set up of my Fire bellied toad tank. I decided to takepictures of the process to show the steps and the equipment involved.Unfortunately, I didn't get this idea until after I started tearingit apart. If I would have thought of it earlier, I would haveincluded some photo's of the tank before I tore it apart. It wasextremely overgrown.

This first set of pictures are the tank, filter, pump,plants, rocks, gravel, and wood. These are all of the things that gointo my tank. Notice that the filter plate is much smaller then thetank. This works well since a majority of the gravel is piled on topof the filter plate. That size filter plate seems to be plenty largeto keep the water clean (although if I had a larger plate, I woulduse it).

1supplies.pict	gravel.pict	plants1.pict
plants2.pict	plant_bromeliad1.pict	plant_bromeliad2.pict
rock1.pict	rock2.pict	rock3.pict
rock4.pict	rocks.pict	wood1.pict
wood2.pict	wood3.pict

These next set of pictures will show you how I put it alltogether. The hose on the pump (a Penguin power head) feeds the waterfall. You can see a hole in the main piece if drift wood where thewater comes out.. I dump about 85% of the gravel in all at once. Iuse the remaining gravel to do extra landscaping and to fill in thearea in back (behind the driftwood. This gives the tank manydifferent levels and seems to add depth. It also creates manydifferent types of areas for the toads to hide. I use many of thesmaller pieces of drift wood and rocks to plug the holes in the mainpiece of wood. These aren't really holes, but gaps between the woodand the tank. The reason that I plug the holes is because all of thegravel would eventually flow out these holes if I didn't. Trust me.

#01-shelf.pict	#02-bare_tank.pict	#03-tank_filter.pict
#04-gravel1.pict	#05-gravel2.pict	#06-gravel3.pict
#07-gravel4.pict	#08-setup1.pict	#09-setup2.pict
#10-waterfall_hose.pict	#11-setup3.pict	#12-setup4.pict
#13-setup5.pict	#14-setup7.pict	#15-setup8.pict
#16-setup9.pict	#17-setup10.pict	#18-setup11.pict
#19-setup12.pict

The reason I use live plants in my tanks is because theyare a great filter. They convert much of the waste into inert inertmatter or into plant material. Look at these pictures and see howmany plants that I remove each time. Now think of these plants asliving poop. If the plants had not grown, all of that material wouldbe stuck in the gravel as waste. I just happen to think that plantsare prettier then frog poop. I can pull out this amount every 6months.

leftovers1.pict

leftovers2.pict

Here are some pictures of the toads exploring there newhome just after I put them back in. There are currently 14 FireBellied Toads living in this 38 gallon tank. I just traded a largegroup of babies for some adults from different genetic stock. I willbe adding these to the tank after a quarantine period. I believe thatthis is important for their well being and coloration. I once let a3rd generation batch of frogs reproduce. The coloration was very off.I now bring in new stock every time by trading away my young toads.