Ideas for terrarium designs

If you’ve never been to a desert you’ll probably only know them from films and documentaries. But they rarely focus on what we are interested in: What does the soil look like? How are the stones layered? What do the caves where the animals take refuge look like?

Engaging with the habitat of the animals you plan to keep is really one of the most rewarding parts of terraristics. It may even incite you to take a trip to the home territories of the animals. However this can prove tricky. A trip to the home territories of the popular leopard gecko would land you pretty much in the centre of all the world’s crises spots: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, etc. Maybe the internet search will suffice after all.

Once you have selected a species and know that you are able to set up a terrarium with a suitable size, the fascinating research can begin:

  • Where exactly do the animals live?
  • Are they active in the day or during the night?
  • What are the local soil characteristics?
  • Which plants can be found in the habitat?
  • What are the abiotic factors, such as humidity, temperature and light?
  • What type of rock is there: granite, slate or red sandstone?

Habitats in the biotope

The term biotope refers to the habitat, comparable to a house. The habitat itself is like one room, say a kitchen. The indication "rainforests of Costa Rica" about the habitat is thus not very helpful. Does the frog hop on the ground or does it climb trees? Or both? The more information you can get, the sooner you’ll have a picture in your mind's eye about the decoration in the terrarium. If you then enter "Costa Rica rainforest" on google images, you will receive beautiful pictures of nature (and a lot of strangers grinning into the camera). These will help you to create a breath of Costa Rica in your terrarium. And a holiday in Costa Rica is healthier than one near the Afghan-Pakistani border, where no one would believe, that you were there for the leopard geckos.

A look at the picture galleries of JBL Expeditions can also help you. Since our focus is on the animals and their habitats, our pictures are often more helpful than those of "normal" tourists.

JBL expeditions

Pictures and reports of the JBL expeditions

Expeditions

All the biotopes encountered on the JBL expeditions are analysed. In aquatic biotopes we carry out water measurements, UV measurements, lux measurements at different depths under water and we also measure the current. You will find detailed reports with nature shots and measurement data about the respective research expedition here.

A word about cookies before we continue

The JBL Homepage also uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: We require technical and functional cookies to ensure that everything works when you visit this website. We also use cookies for marketing purposes. This ensures that we recognise you when you visit our extensive site again, that we can measure the success of our campaigns and that the personalisation cookies allow us to address you individually and directly, adapted to your needs - even outside our website. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not allow (more on this under "Change settings").

The JBL website uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: Technical and functional cookies are absolutely necessary so that everything works when you visit this website. In addition, we use cookies for marketing purposes. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not (more on this under "Change settings").

Our data protection declaration tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. Please confirm the use of all cookies by clicking "Accept" - and you're on your way.

Are you over 16 years old? Then confirm the use of all cookies with "Noticed" and you are ready to go.

Choose your cookie settings

Technical and functional cookies, so that everything works when you visit our website.
Marketing cookies, so that we recognize you on our pages and can measure the success of our campaigns.

PUSH messages from JBL

What are PUSH messages? As part of the W3C standard, web notifications define an API for end-user notifications that are sent to the user's desktop and/or mobile devices via the browser. Notifications appear on the end devices as they are familiar to the end user from apps installed on the device (e.g. emails). Notifications appear on the end user’s device, just like an app (e.g. for emails) installed on the device.

These notifications enable a website operator to contact its users whenever they have a browser open - it doesn’t matter whether the user is currently visiting the website or not.

To be able to send web push notifications, all you need is a website with a web push code installed. This allows brands without apps to take advantage of many of the benefits of push notifications (personalised real-time communications at just the right moment).

Web notifications are part of the W3C standard and define an API for end user notifications. A notification makes it possible to inform the user about an event, such as a new blog post, outside the context of a website.

JBL GmbH & Co. KG provides this service free of charge, and it is easy to activate or deactivate.