Converting an Eclipse 37 into a tree frog paludarium?

[Theodore Tibbitts]

So I work at a pet store, and we had a Marineland Eclipse 37 go on clearance. It was originally $200, on clearance it was $50, and this happened to coincide with a double associate discount day, so I ended up getting it for $35 dollars. It comes equipped with a two bulb flourescent fixture and a aquarium filter built into the hood.

Now, I bought it because it was cheap, not for specifically any given plan. But I've been wanting to get some dumpy tree frogs for awhile, and I've also been reading articles in various places about false bottom tree frog tanks with shallow pools and water falls built in, and frankly, they seem incredibly awesome. I'd really love to do that... but I'm on a budget.

So I'm trying to brainstorm ways to get it done with a minimal investment. The ideal would be to use more or less what came with the kit as much as possible.

My biggest logistical concern has to do with the waterfall, but first off a simpler problem, as far as heating goes, any recommendations? I've read conflicting things, from to not use incandescent lighting on amphibians because it dries them out to they need a basking spot of 85-90. My tentative plan had been to get an UTH of sufficient size and place it somehow to achieve the necessary temperature, but having never done something like this before, I confess to being unsure where precisely that would be, as well as if that would be sufficient. Do I place it below the tank (guessing no with a false bottom/aquifer)? On the side? If on the side, on the bottom or the top? I imagine the tree frogs will mostly be basking at the top of the terrarium, so putting the heat there makes some intuitive sense, but heat also rises, so I dunno.

Also, any recommendations for brand? I've had bad experience with Zoo Med UTH's with my balls, so I'm thinking of going for Flukers.

Anyway, though, on to the main issue, the waterfall. My ideal plan is to have a few inches of aquifer, a small pond in the tank, and then by some means have the water be input into the built in filter in the hood and then output the filter output into a waterfall. Before I purchased the tank, I imagine I could just attack some tubing to the filter input and run it to the bottom of the tank, flip the filter on, and it'd magically suck the water straight up. Not so, unfortunately - I tested it today, and the filter pump, which is inside the aquarium inline with the input tube, must be under the water level to begin pumping. Once it begins it is indeed powerful enough to continue pumping the water as long as the input opening stays submerged, but it appears to need to be "primed" to start. I feel like although I could "prime" it before building it and have it work, it'd be a huge headache to re-prime it whenever it needed maintenance and had to be turned off. That's a headache I'd rather not have. I'm also concerned that since it was designed to be fully submerged when running it might not adequately cool when not submerged.

Does anyone have any bright ideas or suggestions of ways to make it work? Unfortunately the output of the filter pump is not a standard shape, so I can't just move the pump to the bottom of the tank and then attach a tube to the filter in the hood. I am thinking I might need to just buy a new pump and some tubing and do it that way, and discard the pump that it came with (i.e., store it away for future use) but that seems wasteful when I have a perfectly good if awkward pump it came with. Plus if I buy a new pump, it makes me wonder if it even makes sense to use the hood at all, when I could instead use a screen top and create a waterfall some other way. Although having it be filtered is a nice bonus.

Anyways, mostly still in the brainstorming phase. Honestly I'm not even so wedded to the idea of the dumpies I might just save this aquarium for some fish and buy a pacman for an empty ten gallon I have. I want to get myself a frog for Christmas, but I don't want to spend a lot of money, so that might be the better plan anyways. I just got super excited about making a waterfall.