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Hello I popped in here a couple months ago, wondering about starting a fish tank around Easter. Well the more we talked about it, the more we realized that what we really want to do is wait until we move next year, and put in a BIGGER tank... something like a 55 gallon in the new edition. So we're still planning on getting fish, but want to wait so we can have a bigger tank & don't have to worry about transporting a giant glass nightmare.

But now I have a different dilemma & was hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction. My son is sending in for leopard frog tadpoles this week as a part of his curriculum. We've got a 1-gallon critter-cage to house the 'poles in until they're fully grown, and were originally planning on letting them go in a pond that I know also houses leopard frogs when they are full-grown. But he wants to keep them, rather than let them go where some big, hungry animal could eat his friends.

So we've found a 15-gallon critter cage that ought to house a couple frogs pretty well & have found a way to split it into an amphibious environment for just a couple bucks. And I think we've got an okay idea of what to put into each side & how to keep it clean and all that... but then again I've never owned a frog.

Does anyone have any experience with frogs? From what we've found, it looks like these will get to 2-5" long, live 5-8+ years, and the foods we found listed most often were: crickets, earthworms, wax worms, fly larvae & mealworms. Each site we checked had one or two others, but we dropped them from the list because nothing else was consistent.

If anyone has any clue how we could care for these critters, or knows where we could go... we'd be extremely grateful. We've found several sites, but each one has slightly different info & we want to be sure we do this right.
Thanks so much!
love,
mom

how many tadpoles do you have, as a 15g may be too small

Umm, they've not come in yet. The brochure says we'll have 6-10 tadpoles. We'd been assuming that not more than half of them would make it to adulthood... maybe we were wrong?

The critter cage we're looking at is 12" x 24" x 12" Since it's the same floor-dimension as a 20 gallon, I'd thought it might work???
love,
mom

Once the tadpoles have grown their legs and lost their tail they'll need a tank of approximately half land half water. Depending which exact species we're talking about these frogs will be 3-5" and require enough depth of water they can dive and swim along with enough land they can jump out of water. Adults will also eat insects such as crickets and not fish food. We caught some leopard tadpoles before and raised them in a 10g aquarium but when they grew all their legs we returned them to the stream we got them from so I do not know anymore details of their adult care. I would think several adult frogs would require quite a large tank and quite a bit of work to make it half land. At minimum I would think a 20g long but a 55g would probably be need to keep all the tadpoles you raise.

However there are fully aquatic frogs. The african dwarf frog does fine in about 1 gallon per frog although 2gallons per frog would be preferred. You probably want to avoid the clawed frog because it grows much larger. The dwarf frogs have webbed feet and the clawed frogs don't. My boyfriend loves frogs but doesn't have the means to setup a half land tank right now so he talked me into getting 4 dwarf frogs for my 5g. Their care is pretty simple and a google search will probably tell you all you want to know. Breeding them also isn't too difficult except they will eat their eggs and tadpoles so you need a seperate container to move the eggs into.

Well I think we could make room for a 23 long in his room... but do those come with mesh lids rather than a full aquarium lid? And do you have any idea what it might weigh? I'm guessing that cage + water is roughly 80lbs, and other "stuff" would bring it to about 100lbs. Is this about right? It was the weight that was worrying us to begin with, and if it will weigh more than this we'll also need to come up with a stand. I found instructions for taking a piece of plexi & fitting it into place with aquarium sealant to split the tank. We've got a sheet of plexi here, so all I'd need is the sealant to make that work.

I hadn't really intended on doing anything other than just raise & release them either. But he is pretty insistent, and DH said that if he could find space in his own room it would be okay. He is very good with our guinea pigs, and we are prepared to oversee his care of them. As he wants to work with animals when he gets older, we are prepared to take on an extra animal here or there as he grows. I just hadn't expected them to be FROGS!
love,
mom

i dont know much about the likelihood of them all surviving, but you could probably fit 4 leopards in there. although they really should be in a larger tank where theyll be able to roam around. BTW, all three species of leopard (northern, southern, and plains) grow 2-3 1/2in, with record breakers being 5in.

I don't know. It just doesn't seem to me like you should stick an animal which can clear several feet in one jump into a tank that small but all the sites I've looked at say it's fine. This site http://exoticpets.about.com/cs/frogsandtoads/a/leopardfrogs.htm says a 10g is ok and this one http://allaboutfrogs.org/info/species/leopard.html says you need at least 6" of water depth. This one http://www.grizzlyrun.com/Pets/Amphibians/Frogs/Leopard_Frog/Default.htm also says 10g is sufficient for 1 frog. This is the last site I found http://www.repticzone.com/caresheets/692.html if any of those help.

Yeah, I'd seen most of those too... but I know from owning guinea pigs that you'll see all these sites on what a pet CAN live in, and only one or two on what they'll live comfortably in. I guess that's what I was looking for, was what would it take to make them comfortable. I can't afford to get them a 12' pond in the backyard, but within reason if they're living here I'd like them to be happy.
love,
mom

but do those come with mesh lids rather than a full aquarium lid

My local Petsmart sells just tanks...without a lid or anything extra. If you could find a bare tank you could probably get some type of "critter" cover with the mesh in it. Look around at different LFS or pet stores.

*Kristin*

Cool Looks like we've found a lovely 20 long tank. We're going to keep our eyes out for a 23 gallon, but if we don't find one it looks like this ought to work okay for about 3 frogs.

Does anyone know which of the zillions of substrates are the "best?" We're looking at repti-bark, coconut husk & soil mixed with peat moss... which one of these would be better, or is there something else we should be looking at?

Also, for lining the bottom of the aquarium side... everything says to use gravel that is smallish, but too large to be swallowed. Does anyone have an idea of what size that might be?
Thanks so much!
love,
mom

Most bark will be too abrasive , the fine ground coconut husk bricks that soak in water are great and dont harbour mould easily, live sphagnum moss is fantastic if you can keep it alive. To be honest in the long run leopard frogs like to swim, so id be tempted to half fill the tank with water with filtration as you would for fish and get hold of a load of natural shaped cork bark and tie them together as a giant raft for the land portion.You can tie bromeliads and mosses to them for a more natural look. Terrestrial frogs have a lot of trouble understanding glass and perspex and these surfaces can really confuse them, also having a moist land area can lead to all sorts of fungal problems when the frog vents its moisture , splashes etc. Its nice to back the entire rear of the tank both above and below water with natural cork (those flat plates of cork look awful).Silicone a few bromeliads or tough plants like devils ivy, or spider plants to it and you get an instant posh looking tank.The nice thing about natural cork is that it comes in handy tube shapes for refuges and can be wired into backgrounds sideways to make log shapes for sitting on well clear of the water.Floating cork also makes excellent haul out areas for developing neonate frogs, so you dont have to worry during their period of metamorphosis.It will be something they easily recognise.

If you dont want a seperate land portion the simple answer can be large pebbles that protrude from the water with a few pieces of bogwood strewn about.At least that way water still circulates freely around the base , and it pretty much limits your maintenance to the occasional rinse and water change.

If you must have a seperate land area make sure its rigourously clean, and kept slightly damp.

For the substrate on the aquarium bottom in the water portion im sure regular aquarium gravel will be fine, most frogs dont swallow gravel unless its incidentally ingested when attacking terrestrial prey, most frogs dont feed that well underwater and will prefer to eat above the water surface when they can , with the exception on the totally aquatic species like surinam toads and dwarf xenopus frogs. If youre worried about ingestion in the land area the simplest answer has to be either dont have a substrate, or go with something that breaks down easily like peat. Hard substrates like, coconut, bark, sand, vermiculite and gravel can obviously all cause gut impaction even if swallowed in moderate amounts. The risks are highest with material that will not digest in the frogs carnivorous gut and also absorb water, thus swelling after ingestion. A little moss or peat will probably do no harm.

Thanks so much!

We've had a terrible setback. The mailman delivered our frog embryos to the mailbox!!! They sat there over the weekend in subzero temperatures. We're letting it thaw slowly & will hold on to them to see if anyone managed to survive, but we've already ordered a second batch... AFTER screaming at the PO. What on earth did they think LIVE FROG EMBRYO, Protect from Heat and Cold, and Open at Once meant anyway??? He knows we're always home, and that I don't always make it down the road to the mailbox & didn't even try to deliver this. (sigh)

So we've got a little more time to set the tank up. Still haven't found anything bigger than the 20 long though... so that might be what we end up going with after all.
love,
mom

If theyve literally frozen, the eggs cells will have exploded and that will be the end of that. If theyre just cold, raise the temperature slowly over several days and hope for the best.