Replacing peat moss

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martin

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martin handford
I still don't have any newts, but I want to use peat moss for the land area and use a siliconed plexiglass divider. It's in a 20g tank and around 1/3 of the area will be land and I'm thinking it will be around 4 to 5" deep. There will be at least 1 land plant in the moss. How often should I replace the peat moss? Do newts poo anywhere they want? It would be nice if they only poo in the water which would make cleaning a lot easier.
 
I forgot to mention, I'll be getting Japanese fire-belly newts. Maybe 4 of them
 
I personally avoid using moss in my semi-aquatic tanks. I find the easiest setup invloves piled stones and gravel for the land area - then if the newts defecate on land it's easy to find and clean up. I used to include moss in my land areas, but I found that it always ended up in the water. I change the substrate in my terrestrial tanks about every month or so. I also clean up any messes every two days.
 
I was actually thinking of doing it the way you did in setup #10. I'll have to think about it some more. I understand how it takes away from the water space. As for the swamping, was this caused by a poor silicone job or was it something else?
 
The silicone held perfectly (and was a chore to remove later). The problem was wicking. It always seemed "impossible" that water was getting over the barrier, but it happened anyway. The only way I could stop it was to keep the water level way low.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by wicking. Does that mean the newts would splash the water onto the land?
 
Wicking is the movement of a liquid by capillary action. Like when you spill ink on tissue and it spreads out. Same thing happens at your land/water divider over rocks, plants, maybe even the glass of the divider itself. It's not easy to stop and your land will get waterlogged over time.
 
I have a suggestion for setup #10. I have 2 tanks with horizontal dividers and haven't had any trouble at all with wicking or soggy peat. I also suggest setup #10 is ideal for frogs that require more land than water (not that tree frogs need a huge amount of water) or ambastomids that mostly live on land. One tank of mine houses gray tree frogs. They do use the small water area. The other tank is set up with mostly land and some water area for 2 maculatums which I have seen them use at night. Anyway, long story short;

A 1-1 1/2 inch layer of pea gravel.
Then a layer of figerglass screen (like what's in your windows) cut to the exact size of the inside.
Then the peat, plants, rocks and other decorations. While I know most don't recommend it, I had a hole drilled (using a special carbide drill tip)into the in the land area glass about an inch up from the bottom for drainage if needed. Plugged of course. Where the newts/frogs can enter the water, I layed flat stones up to the edge of the glass dividers to help slough off any extra bark or dirt they may drag in. That has worked well. I have noticed if excess water does spill over into the peat, it drains into the pea gravel and is eventually wicked back up into the peat due to the surface moisture evaporating. The screen keeps all of the peat from mixing with the pebbles. I also have small submersable Whisper filters in each water area. Perhaps the horizontal divider idea is better for species requiring less water area than land.
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Got to thinking...this thread should've been in the Vivaria section...
blush.gif
 
I suppose I should have put it in the vivaria section. I'll let one of the mods move it. I was thinking to decrease the amount of water from wicking I could put some sphagnum moss against the divider wall on the land area. Hopefully it will absorb most of the water and it would be easy to replace.
 
I was thinking this would probably increase the wicking, but it might still help prevent the peat moss from getting water-logged if I change it often.
 
Going back to your original plan, you have a 20g tank with 4 inches of water in 2/3rds of the tank. If it is a "standard" 20g (LxWxH = 24x12x18 inches), my calculation comes up with a water volume of about 3 gallons. If I assume you have a 20-long tank (30x12x12), then I calculate a water volume of about 5 gallons. Just something to think about, as it will limit the number/size of newts you can keep and safely maintain decent water quality.

I don't think the moss will help much, as peat moss is at least as absorbent (if not more so) as the sphagnum.

You might want to consider a "false bottom" under the land area. Googling should give you some photos of these kinds of setups.
 
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