We love natural terraria! What makes a naturally planted terrarium so appealing? Where do we start? Would some random thoughts help, in no particular order?
• The challenge of creating a slice of realistic habitat!
• Knowing we have provided the best for our animals!
• The planted terrarium looks great in the living room!
• Observing natural behaviour from animals, plants and everything that lives in the terraria!
• Fine tuning the environment, there is always improvements to be made!
• Creating a balance, a total microclimate within the terrarium!
There really is nothing that comes close, when considering keeping a reptile or amphibian. Wherever possible we would always choose a natural eco-terrarium over a simple more sterile bare vivarium.
We have covered many aspects of building and maintaining eco- terraria over the years, for many different reptile, amphibian and even invertebrate species. We have a dedicated department at Coast to Coast Exotics, complete with several beautiful living planted terrarium and everything you need – from a large selection of plants, drainage, planting medium, moss, branches and the various specialist electrical components. There is now a thriving marketplace of lighting, heating, rain and mist systems all aimed at making the art of terra-scaping easier and more successful.
In this blog we want to tell you about humidity creators and rain spray systems. Once over the only option was to manually spray the terrarium, or ingeniously adapt products from the beauty industry or even further afield! However now there is dedicated purpose designed rain and misting systems from virtually every brand in the reptile marketplace. We first stocked Habistat products nearly thirty years ago, right from our opening day all those years ago. The brand has over the years expanded to include more than the heat mats and thermostats they were once well known for and now encompasses virtually every aspect of the hobby. Recently they introduced Rainmaker, Rainmake Pro and a Humidifier to their range – along with some fitments that can expand your system. So, what is the difference from a Rain Maker and a Humidifier? Quite simply the humidifier creates a fog of water droplets which will alter the level of water droplets
(humidity) in the air. A Rainmaker creates simulated rain, this can be prolonged storms or short showers.
Habistats Humidifier is a neat little device with an inbuilt output control and a large 4 litre water reservoir. This means it can constantly run at its maximum 300ml per hour for around twelve hours – of course this would never happen in real life meaning the reservoir is large enough to last several days. By using it’s inbuilt touch control on the top of the unit the working time can be adjusted to run for between 2-120 minutes, with a cycle time of up to four hours intervals. In practise this means an effective cloud of mist can be maintained for many different terrains and (plant / animal) species. We find it to be very quiet, verging on silent and comes with a long flexible hose that can reach a terrarium up to 1.5m away.
Their base Rainmaker system (there is a Pro version too) is equally impressive and fit for purpose. The Rainmaker has a built in 2.2l water reservoir and is well thought out with an easy refill at the top of the unit. Inbuilt control allows a variable cycle, power output and duration of rain within the connected terrarium or terraria. Single or multiple terraria are possible – the unit comes with two good quality nozzles and 5m of flexible pipe, optional nozzles and accessories expand the system easily. We set up a terrarium with both a Humidifier and a Rainmaker and found this worked very well – the Dart frogs and plants loved it!