Paludarium Tech Stuff

In order to keep your plants nice and healthy they need good lighting to keep the photosynthesis going.

Paludarium plants

It has been proven that LED grow lights stimulate photosynthesis rates to an extent that currently makes them the best artificial source for planted vivarium lighting. Another advantage of LED lighting is the low power consumtion.

I bought a 120 cm long light fixture with adjustable brackets. It has 150 white "2835" LED's and 24 Blue "2835" LED's.

Energy consumption 24W. It also has a double switch so you can keep both the white and blue lights on or only the blue ones.

120cm long paludarium light fixture

But I also wanted some red LED lights for the plants and for a nice sunset sunrise effect. After some research I decided to buy a 5m strip of red LED lights on Ebay. They run on 12V and I was lucky enough to have an old 12V charger somewhere in a drawer.
 

Red LED lights Paludarium

The 5m strip comes with an adhesive 3M strip so it's easy to just stick it on the plastic frame of the 120 cm long light fixture.

LED Lighting Paludarium

 

LED Lighting -  Red only - Paludarium

 

LED Lighting -  Red and Blue - Paludarium

LED Lighting -  Red and Blue - Paludarium

In order to avoid mould and steamy windows you need some air circulation in your Paludarium. A 12V old computer fan (or even better 2 or 3) will do the job. It's not running all the time but aproximately 15 min every hour day and night. Their power consumtion is negligible.

Computer fan in Paludarium

I use 3 digital timers; one for the main lights and waterfall, one for the red lights and one for the computer fan.

Digital timers  - Paludarium

For the waterfall (actually it's more a waterstream) I bought a cheap 300L/h 3W so called "Waterfall pump". It does it job but next time I would go for a more expensive one which hopefully is a bit less noisy (you can hear a humming noise when it's really quiet at night).
So at night I switch it off together with the main lights. 

300L/h Waterfall pump - Paludarium

300L/h Waterfall pump outlet covered in Java Moss - Paludarium

And for water circulation and filtering I use a 400L/h 6W external aquarium pump. Most frogs don't like high flow levels in the water so don't go to big if you, like me, also want to keep frogs in your Paludarium. It was a bit hard to get it going because the waterlevel in a Paludarium is way lower then in a normal fish tank. I had to use some silicone to make the pipe and hose connections air tight. Normally those connections are submerged but when you use them above water level air will get sucked in all the time. Keep this in mind when you buy one. 

400L/h External filter - Paludarium

400L/h External filter - Paludarium

400L/h External filter exploded view - Paludarium

Inside the external filter I use charcoal, ceramic noodles and a bag of Purigen (Seachem). It works well and keeps the water nice and clear. Besides that I change around 10% of the water every week or so.

Charcoal used in external filter - Paludarium

 

Purigen used in external filter - Paludarium