Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm in the process of designing new habitats for my Corucia zebrata. I'm having 2 custom acrylic enclosures built, each 4'H x 2' x 2'. The cages will have an almost entirely screen top and a 1/2" drain valve in the center of the base. The cages will be set up with false bottoms so that water can freely flow past the gravel substrate and out the drain when the cage in being cleaned or watered. Water can also be pooled in the bottom of the tank underneath the substrate to increase humidity. Each cage will sit on a base that is ~3' tall with a door in the front. Bases will be large enough to place a 5 gallon bucket under the drain to collect water when the valve is open. All lighting, CHEs, etc at the top of the tanks will be hidden by hoods.

My initial intention was to get a canister filter like a Magnum and attach it to the tank drain. It could filter the water (C. zebrata manufacture lots of waste daily!) and recirculate it as rain. The plan is to circulate the water up to the outside of the top of the tank where the outflow hose would be attached to a PVC frame with holes cut in it to create rain.

Now I'm wondering if that's the best possible system. My goals for the habitat, in order of importance, are as follows:

1) Provide a healthy habitat for the skinks. They prefer humidities in the 60-70% range and have a wet and dry(ish) season. They will drink from a water bowl, but also like to drink the spray when I mist them in their current cages.

2) Create an attractive display. This will be in my living room, not in the corner of the herp room, so appearance is important.

3) Have a system that is as low-maintenance as possible. Helix thermostats are providing that for the heating side of things, and an integrated powerstrip/timer is doing it for the lighting. I do like to travel on weekends, so a system that can be left alone for 2-3 days at a time and still perform is desirable.

4) Not drill any additional holes in the acrylic cage unless absolutely necessary.

So, my questions:
1) Will a Magnum lift the water high enough to get to the top of the tank (about 7ft)?
2) Will the PVC frame work? I'm planning on keeping the PVC diameter the same as the filter outflow (3/8", iirc). I'm afraid the water may all just dump out the first few holes and not make it to the rest of the frame.
3) Is there a better way to get water to the enclosure from above? I like the idea of a mist rather than a stream of rain, but the misters won't provide any filtration as they circulate the water and recycling dirty water isn't really ideal.
4) Is there a way to do both? Misters for daily humidity control and rain system for the annual wet season?
5) Reading other posts here about misters I see that I'd need a PSI of around 50 to get misting nozzles to work, and that I should take the TDH of my pump and multiply it by 0.45 to find it's PSI. Unfortunately, I can't find any info on the TDH of the Magnum canisters. If I could use the Magnum to do both misting and rain (not at once of course!) that may solve my problem.

So this is so long, but my brain is reeling on this one. Ideas, comments, suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
-Meredith

>>I'm in the process of designing new habitats for my Corucia zebrata. I'm having 2 custom acrylic enclosures built, each 4'H x 2' x 2'.

Why acrylic for C. zebrata? I have friends who keep this species and they have absolutely trashed acrylic doors. I mean you can barely see through them. They just scratch the heck out of it.

>>My initial intention was to get a canister filter like a Magnum and attach it to the tank drain. It could filter the water (C. zebrata manufacture lots of waste daily!) and recirculate it as rain.

I do not recommend this with C. zebrata. As you say they produce a lot of waste. And while this species is know for eating their own feces I just would not trust a filtration system to deal with their waste sufficiently.

>>Now I'm wondering if that's the best possible system. My goals for the habitat, in order of importance, are as follows:

>>1) Provide a healthy habitat for the skinks. They prefer humidities in the 60-70% range and have a wet and dry(ish) season. They will drink from a water bowl, but also like to drink the spray when I mist them in their current cages.

I always emphasize water droplet size. Smaller droplets increase the humidity more and do so with less water. However, many species become stressed by a finer mist and don't deal well with the greater evaporative cooling effect.

Large droplets don't have as much of an evaporative cooling effect and many species seem to enjoy a larger water droplet size. The downfall to larger water droplets is that they use A LOT more water and can quickly flood a cage if the system malfunctions during a long weekend away. If you run the water from a tank and the system malfunctions then you can have issues with the pump running dry. Not good.

So regardless of what you do you might consider shutting the system off on weekends away from home.

In a nutshell, I strongly suspect Corucia prefer larger, warmer water droplets. You might design your system around that.

>>1) Will a Magnum lift the water high enough to get to the top of the tank (about 7ft)?

I don't know.

>>2) Will the PVC frame work? I'm planning on keeping the PVC diameter the same as the filter outflow (3/8", iirc). I'm afraid the water may all just dump out the first few holes and not make it to the rest of the frame.

This really depends on the number and size of the holes, as well as how much lift the pump has.

I've done this with frogs and it takes an extraordinary amount of water. I'd probably find a mist head and use a few of those.

One of my favorites for producing larger droplet sizes is a replacement nozzle I found for those pump-up garden sprayers. Worked very well.

>>3) Is there a better way to get water to the enclosure from above? I like the idea of a mist rather than a stream of rain, but the misters won't provide any filtration as they circulate the water and recycling dirty water isn't really ideal.

Again, I decide what water droplet size I want and then I design a misting/rain system from there.

>>4) Is there a way to do both? Misters for daily humidity control and rain system for the annual wet season?

I'm sure there is. It will likely require two pumps and two sets of nozzles.

>>5) Reading other posts here about misters I see that I'd need a PSI of around 50 to get misting nozzles to work,...

Not if you use a nozzle with a larger droplet size.

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Current snakes:

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.3 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

3.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

>>Why acrylic for C. zebrata? I have friends who keep this species and they have absolutely trashed acrylic doors. I mean you can barely see through them. They just scratch the heck out of it.

Yeah, I realize scratching may be a problem, but Melamine and wood won't stand up to the water as well and glass is too fragile and heavy because I move every 2-4 years. I'm hoping that prviding enough climbing surface and hides will cut down on the scratching, and I can always replace the front door every few years if it gets really bad.

>>I do not recommend this with C. zebrata. As you say they produce a lot of waste. And while this species is know for eating their own feces I just would not trust a filtration system to deal with their waste sufficiently.

After reading the response here so far I think I may set up a misting system using a separate water source and large droplets for daily use and only use the canister filter to rain during the rainy season. During the rainy season I would also provide daily water changes.

Thanks.

i have suggested this before but many people tend to dislike this method but it has been the ebst method for me.

using a sprayer of size that best fits your application, cut off the wand part and using the appropriate fittings attach the hose to a garden hose timer, and then to a series of misting nozzels.
the entire system should be under $100 and can be much cheaper depending on the controlabilty you are looking for.
you can find almost all the parts you need at barrs.com including the misting nozzels.
i found a garden hose timer at my local harware store for about $30 which i was able to set up to four differnt spray times each day down to i belive minute intervals. if you do not need such control im sure you can find a much cheaper timer.
the downside to this method is that you will have to manually pump a sprayer every 3-4 days.
but in your case you will be fine leaving this system for a weekend as there will be no pumps to run dry.
this should work good for you as you want to already have a drain and space under the elcosure where you could easily place the pump sprayer out of view.
you my be able to install the nozzels without drilling but if you need to drill you will only need 1/4" holes for the tubing which would leave no gap at all.
on top of all this, the nozzels have screens inside for filtering and can be adjusted to larger or smaller droplets to rain or mist as you wanted.
sorry if this is alot of useless information but this system has worked wonders for my chameleons in their free roam setup with a gallon sprayer and four nozzels attached to the ceiling 8ft above.

good luck
jay

Jay, I'm not sure I understood your explanation. Do you have pictures or a diagram for what you're talking about?

if you go to barrs.com they have a diagram of exactly what i am talking about along with selling all of the things you need to construct it asside from the sprayer and garden hose timer.

I bought one a few years back for a small collection of tree vipers. I did not bother with the timer, I just got up in the morning and gave the system a pump or two.

Simple and totally safe. I have heard of people having issues with the timer. I assume that's due to a very small leak somewhere in the system. I imagine lots of teflon-tape would resolve that.

I also suspect the pumps with pressure relief valves won't work as well.

Does your pump have one?
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Current snakes:

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.3 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

3.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

i dont know if my pump has a pressure relase as i put it together years ago. i had no problem with anything once it was set up but then again i only used the misting nozzels from there and got all the rest of the parts at the hardware store.

np