inside of midwife toad enclosure

[morg]

Heres a pic of the inside of my midwife toad enclosure, made from a large deep water tub.
Substrate is deep, and has two hibernicular [polystyrene boxes].
The toads have just been added so I cannot say how they will do longterm.
The rest of the enclosure, not seen on the pic, contains a water bowl, live moss and helxine.

[morg]

Forgot to mention that the enclosure has been up and running[without toads] for a year, has a thriving insect population,[woodlice, millipedes etc] and when covered overwinter went down to 2 degrees c mid winter, although the hibernicular will probably be slightly above this temperature.

[Pollywog]

Hi Morg,
I've tried keeping Triturus outdoors in these big black water storage tanks but had trouble with the suns heat being absorbed by the black colour of the plastic leading to the water over heating on a hot day. How warm does it get being used for a terrestrial enclosure?

[Killian]

Have you tried burying the tub? it shouldnt over heat if under ground

[morg]

The terrestrial tub is in a shaded spot of the back yard and hardly catches any direct sunlight.
However on the hottest summer afternoons I shield the side that does catch the sun with pieces of wood-hardboard.
The temperatures last year in the enclosure never went as high as in the rest of the garden.

I have a tub the same [4ft long] full of water that I use to raise Triturus larvae to advanced stages, this set up gets warm, but no warmer than the water of my smallest pond.

I raise larvae native larvae in the tub to put back into my ponds when most of the larvae eating adult T cristatus have left the water.