Sponge/foam

Hey,
While battling with feeding worms before they bury into the substrate I started thinking about how terrestrial set-ups for example N.Kaiseri could be made differently. I often worry about the cleanliest of the terrestrial set-up, I feel if I put too many cleaning insects in, then the newts wont be hungry enough to take worms etc before they bury themselves. Some people like myself use bare bottom tanks in aquatic setups to help keep the water extra clean, but this isn't something we can do in a terrestrial setup as we need a moisture gradient.
One crazy idea that popped up was to fill the bottom of the tank with 1cm or so of water and then place on top of it, various sponges and foams of differing density and thickness, in order to provide differing moisture in different areas of the tank. Now I'm not saying I'm going to do this just because it popped into my head, I know I am being anal about cleanliness, but just wanted to know what others thought?
I personally think I would have a couple of concerns about this. 1. Being it may be hard to keep the sponges/foam clean, it would have to be drained regularly and washed out, as it would probably go funny (like a glass of tap water left in a room). 2. The coarseness of the sponges/foam on the underside of the newt. However I'm not sure this is any worse than soil in some cases, but I am pretty sure that if I crawled around on sponges all day, I would have sore parts.
So thoughts?

I agree with your concerns and feel that this wouldn't help keep the tank "clean" very well. You will never really get a "clean" tank. There will always be some sort of parasite, bacteria, and other misc. things in your tanks. Also, with the cleaner food sources. What is the issue if they do ever just fill up on those items? They are great for the animals and a nice variety of food. It also allows them to forage naturally and seems to keep them occupied.

I'm not sure I stand by the 2nd point I made, it would totally depend on the material used. For example if something like: HobbyCraft Fab Foam Sheets - Arts and Crafts Products | HobbyCraft was used, it would probably be softer than soil/stones/wood etc

Filtersponges you can buy @ koifish shops are used in the hobby with a layer of reptibark on them. I would'nt use them without substrate on it, sponges are pretty "hard" and worms won't dig into the sponges indeed.

Couple cm water and an airstone do the rest.









This is Rob Keulers (Netherlands) system wich I helped him set it up. If you want more info just pm me and I'll give you a link where you can follow this up.

Kenny's setup there looks great...I think that is b/c the sponges used there have decent sized holes. In North America a number of large pet store chains sell a variety of sponge/foam products that serve a number of purposes. I have bought nearly all of these products in the past, foolishly thinking they would be easy to clean and save me time. WRONG!!!

I first bought a foam/sponge tank divider that was meant to divide water from the terrestrial part of a tank. One side was flat to hold the substrate and the other side was curved like a ramp for animals to get in and out of the water. After about 6 months the sponge smelled so terrible I had to throw it out. This was despite regular cleanings and soakings of the product. Also the paint on the product(though none toxic) was constantly leaking into the water. All sorts of little parasite like bug began to emerge from the sponge and crickets and earthworms did eventually burrow into the sponge with ease.

Another product I bought from this same line of products was more of what you have described. It was a large flat piece of foam that covered the bottom of a 10G tank. at one end the sponge was also ramped up with a little built-in hide for animals. The other side had holes for hiding and a hole for a filter and/or air pump! Cool right! WRONG. All the same problems: tank smelled, live food found ways to burrow in, was impossible to clean, paint slowly leached into the water and so many different times of little parasite type worms began to emerge it was scary!

SPONGE DID NOT WORK FOR ME...ended up spending $150 on different products all of which are in the garbage.

NathanF said:

Kenny's setup there looks great....

Click to expand...

Rob Keulers setup