Mixing species -PLEASE READ

[arthur cooke]

Hi Dan, I'm moving to Italy later this year so I'm closing every thing down ready to move, but I have plans to build to build my next one there and I thought I would do a step by step video, from building the actual viv right through to the plants and animals, a sort of video diary.

Hi Nic, The frogs are greys tree frog, redeye, north American green tree frog, rough green snakes, goldust day geckos, Peacock day geckos, green anoles, asian long tails, 1 rescued house gecko, fruit beetles, giant millies and some hermit land crabs.
I did at one point try some rainbow crabs, but they built a huge underground network of tunnels and ate every thing, polystyrene, the rubber lining in the pond, plant roots, I'd put a tub of crickets in and 10 minuets later the tub would disappear, dragged into their underground lair.Where it would be broken down into millions of little bits.
cheers arthur

[arthur cooke]

A snippet of one of the rainbow crabs, the little polystyrene waterfall took about a week before it was pulled into little bits.

YouTube - Rainbow and hermit crabs.

cheers arthur

[Nic B-C]

Cheers mate interesting and cant wait the new build

[kevtore999]

What a load of rubbish me and my ex wife managed to live with each other for a whole 3 years and i'm telling you she is a different species to me lol................me be the better of course lol

[divvie_dave]

Ok, now im new, so i'm preparing to get slated but my "local" pet/exotics/supply shop has what they call an "eco" tank set up. I'm not sure if its exactly the same, but its sounds pretty similar to what you guys are arguing about.

Basically its a fairly large viv which houses Electric Blue Geckos, some kind of Fruit Beetles and, some kind of tropical frog. My knowledge of frogs isn't great, so not only can i not remember what species they were, I couldn't even hazard a guess (small and light green lol). Also, there were a number of live plants in this enclosure.

My first impressions on this was that it looked amazing. I'm guessing that alot of work had gone into it to choose the right combinations of everything. But from this my opinion is that it can be done, very well, but you have to know exactly what you are doing.

Personally, i would never house two species of reptile together. But I do think that smaller reptiles could be housed with other small species of other animals. I think size is the main issue here. If you had a whole room, you could probably go wild with some crazy things. But your average vivarium isn't going to be able to house a variety of reptile species.

[arthur cooke]

Hi Dave, I've been building this type of viv for some years now and yes size does make a difference but what is the average size of a viv, I don't think there is an average.
To my mind it really depends on the on the animals, for example, if you're housing tree frogs you need height, also if it's going to be planted you need height because a deeper substrate is needed for plants.
I think you're right in that there is a minimum size but what that would be, I don't know. I would think that if some one were considering a mixed viv the viv would probably be home made.
People like to add things like waterfalls, ponds, rock features and this is easier if you've designed it your self.
Earlier on in this thread I posted a video that I'd made, dunno if you've watched it, it will give you an Idea of what can be achieved.
cheers arthur.

[Carlos]

hey jus lettin yuu knw tht tis is gud basic guide info fr the unknown! n 2 say i once housed a bibron gecko n a palm gecko 2 getha in a plastic vivarium n had no problems

[ginnerone]

i mixed my drinks once and i had major issues the next morning but was very happy whilst doing it,

moral of the story is, things my seem fine at the time but one day you'll more than likley wake up to an injured rep, they DO fight irespective of how calm u think they are, its in there nature to protect themselfs and gain feeding territory, i have kept reps for many many years and wouldn't trust my calmest of reps with each other.

if anyone wants to try mixing lizards i have got an 11" tokay gecko they can try it with if they want but i wouldn't get too attached to your lizard cos he's greedy

[arthur cooke]

Well, some of my mixed vivs ran for more than 10 years without any problems and of course you have to be carefull about whats mixed. I think that I have proved that community vivs work.
cheers arthur

[matt020593]

Hey Arthur, just wondering if you could possibly give a list of all the species you have/have had in you're community vivarium and whether they're breeding or not and all that kind of stuff. I have a 4'H x 3'L x 2'W viv which I am currently in proccess of waterproofing and planting which I shall be using as a community vivarium. I'm just basically looking for as much inspiration as possible.

BTW I subscribed to your youtube channel, some great videos of your viv.