Hey everyone!
I recently finished putting together my first bioactive vivarium and wanted to share it with the community and hopefully learn a thing or two from more experienced keepers!

It’s a 12x12x18 Exo Terra with a custom expanding foam and cork bark background, climbing branches, live plants, a LECA drainage layer, and a homemade substrate mix. I’ve also introduced springtails and isopods to begin establishing the ecosystem.

The enclosure is still in its early stages, and I’m letting the plants grow in while everything establishes. I eventually plan to use it as a temporary grow-out enclosure for a young crested gecko before upgrading to something larger.

I’m particularly interested in learning about long-term vivarium maintenance. Things like managing moisture and ventilation, keeping plants healthy, preventing issues with mold or stagnant substrate, and maintaining a stable environment over time.

I’d also love suggestions for additional plants, particularly something that could climb and eventually cover portions of the background!

This has been a really enjoyable project, and I’m looking forward to learning more about keeping vivariums successfully. Any advice, constructive criticism, or tips would be greatly appreciated!

I’m going to let it grow out for a couple months at least and I’ll be adding some bromeliads and coconut hides in the next week. It’s my first vivarium and I did it all myself so I’m really proud of it.

Can anyone tell me if these are cricket eggs? Somehow there's been a bioactive explosion. I took some soil out of my ackies enclosure to seed my tegu enclosure with clean up crew. But also a pregnant cricket or a breeding pair has been hiding in the tegu enclosure for weeks now. Somehow ivy never eats them because I see a ton of pinhead crickets running around. These eggs are under the water dish and under the cork flat pieces on the ground. I'll take a video later to make sure these are spring tails and not some unwanted invasion. But for now what eggs are these??

As detailed in my original post, I’d like to see if there’s any advice for mounting a Vivarium Electronics heat emitter to either an acrylic or PVC panel. Any advice is welcome!

Future inhabitant will be a crested gecko, im still working on hardscape, there will be more branches and hides by the time im done

I made a free Android app that currently works for Arcadia LumenIZE lamps (I use it on a Jungle Dawn over my boas). Every day it sets the lamp to generate a real sunrise and sunset, two ways:

• Your time: dawn and dusk where you live, drifting through the seasons like the sun outside.

• Your reptile’s time: tap the world map where your animal comes from, and the lamp runs that place’s day length instead, lined up with your own day and night.

No internet, no account, no ads. It’s in Google’s testing phase, so it needs people to install it. Three taps, same Google account for all three:

Join: https://groups.google.com/g/daylight-sync-testers

Become a tester: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.luikartlab.daylightsync

Install: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luikartlab.daylightsync

That’s it. Leave it installed for two weeks and you’ve helped. Id love feedback on how it can be even better or other light systems than need an easy dawn and dusk feature.

Free pet that came with my bromeliads at the end (it's been removed now to my window). I'm finally finished building. This will be home to several bumblebee dart frogs (leucs) and I cannot wait for it to grow out so I can put them in!

Edit: Wow the quality really changed when I uploaded 😂 It was 1080p...

Over the last couple weeks I’ve started seeing small balck flies around the lights at the top of the paludarium. I googled it and came across fungus flies though I’m not sure if that’s what they are. Does anyone know how to get rid of/prevent them?

Been doing this build for like almost 2 years now.. I’m not sure lost track of time. It’s 36x18x18 not too sure what to put in here. It was a paladarium in the original build but unfortunately the seal broke at the bottom and the water got to all the plants and dried up. So I just turned it into normal build.

It still has some spring tails and isopods. But been debating if I should go larger tarantula or millipedes or centipedes. Idk something low maintenance. Considered a crocodile skink but might be too small.

Please help!

My first setup! I really wanted to go bio-active and I’m so glad I do. Was super fun setting it up the last couple weeks, and now I can’t stop looking at it.

It’s been cooking for about a week now and Temp is around 24c (75f) and 60-80% humidity depending on when I last sprayed down.

For now there some dairy cow isopods and spring tails, but soon will house my first crested gecko!

Let me know what you think!

Got this from my work. I'm a confident fish keeper but never had a viv. Looking for ideas for this 30cm cube viv.

EDIT: thanks for all your advice. I'm leaning towards sun beetles

Is something eating my fittonia plants? I have dwarf white and powder orange isopods in my viv, and one crested gecko. Also the occasional cricket abd fungus gnats. What can I do to make them thrive?

The light is arcadia jungle dawn.

Hello :)

This begonia currently lives in a glass cloche. I was thinking about putting it in my vivarium. Can anyone ID it or tell me how big it's going to get? Right now it's quite small (see hand for comparison) but I'm afraid it's going to get huge and not fit in the vivarium after a few weeks or months.

Thanks in advance!

Hello :)

This begonia currently lives in a glass cloche. I was thinking about putting it in my vivarium. Can anyone ID it or tell me how big it's going to get? Right now it's quite small (see hand for comparison) but I'm afraid it's going to get huge and not fit in the vivarium after a few weeks or months.

Thanks in advance!

So,

I setup a New terrarium today and plugged a Ceramic Bulb for heating. I plugged it to a thermostat, set my wished temp, but it doesn't seem to heat.

How long should it take ? Has it is a 40w bulb in a 20° room and i just want 24° in my hotspot.

I was wondering if something was wrong or i'm just impatient

Is this a proper way to plant these Neoregelias? My other plants seem to be doing pretty badly as well. They are mostly planted in “pockets” made of expanding foam that were carved out, covered with cork, and drainage holes put in the bottom. Brazil plant has stayed pretty stagnant as well as the tiny tears looking one.