Bioactive questions

[Lizrd_boy]

So.... I'm interested in doing a tropical bioactive in a 55 g tank, and I was just wondering, what colorful species can live together in a bioactive this size? I wanted to get some sort of dart/mantella frog, and I wanted to get a gold dust day gecko too, but I found that that may not be a good idea. Mourning geckos are cool, too, so maybe those. Anyone have good suggestions for something that can live with these frogs, preferably something colorful? This bioactive would be a sort of decoration in my library, so I want animals that will look colorful. And tropical because, well, come on, tropical just looks awesome lol. And I don't need frogs. I just figured that since I've never kept them before, it might be time to try it. And what about day geckos and mourning geckos?

[Erie_herps]

Is the 55g a top or front opening tank? I would not keep day/mourning geckos in something that size with a top-opening enclosure, I wouldn't keep them in a top-opening enclosure at all due to the risk of them getting crushed/escaping. I was keeping mourning geckos in 32 oz deli cups temporarily and there were times while misting/feeding that they would bolt up. If I didn't have the lid in one hand (which I always did, which was good) they would have escaped for sure since human reaction times are not quick enough to be faster than a bolting mourning that wants to escape, lol.

None of the species you've mentioned are beginner animals but if you paid a lot of attention and had practice maintaining the enclosure before getting the animals, I don't think you would have any problems with them. I have darts and mournings and I'm planning on getting day geckos. I had one out of a trio of dart frogs die and one of my mournings escaped once. So, be prepared for some small issues (hopefully not that major) but you do need to pay close attention, do lots of research, and have an enclosure set up first.

Do you want different types of frogs to live together? If so I think that's very risky. It's much more difficult to keep different species/subspecies together since they will fight a lot more often and you need to be prepared to freeze any eggs you find. It's a big taboo to breed hybrids and it would make it much more difficult to sell any other reptiles and it would hurt your reputation if you tried to sell them, even as pets. If you do want a display like that (with different species together) I would recommend either splitting a long tank into sections (and needing to separate the lid into different sections, which would been building something, at least if there were arboreal geckos in there) or taking other smaller tanks (like an exo-terra or converted aquarium) and putting them together.

Arboreal geckos really don't go well with dart frogs. There are lots of keepers that say they can be kept together and recommend it, but I think it's a terrible idea for beginners. I myself have no plans to even attempt keeping them together, and I wouldn't even consider it until I had years more experience with keeping and breeding both species I was planning on cohabing. It makes maintenance much more difficult since you have quick frogs jumping around and geckos that can decide to bolt and escape in a heartbeat. If you plan on breeding either of them it would be extremely difficult to collect the eggs/babies.

I think you would be able to keep darts, mournings, OR day geckos without much trouble. But I would not keep them together. If you do get day geckos gold dusts are, in my opinion, the best ones to start off with. That's what I'm planning to get first when I make the jump into day geckos. If you have any more questions about them or their care I should be able to help.

[Lizrd_boy]

Great, thanks! At this point it's really just an idea, I wanted to get into bioactive stuff and figured I might as well make it look nice and have some colorful animals in it. I don't know anything about darts yet except that several species shouldn't be cohabbed. I will probably make another post when I have some more ideas about this and if I have any questions. Thanks again!

[Erie_herps]

Bioactives are a lot of fun to have. If you do go this route I think making a custom background would make it look great. If you want to look into it more research expanding foam backgrounds with gorilla glue. I did that for a crested gecko tank and it turned out great. It makes it look super nice and you can do anything you want with it.