# Frogs & Toads > Aquatic Clawed Frogs >  new to the forum :D got a few questions

## superjody

Hi all, ive had albino clawed frogs for 4 years now but could do with some help......started of with princess in a small tank, as she grew i got her different tanks, about 18 months later i found a shop selling adult size frogs and wanted to get her another for company...they nly had 2 left and i couldnt leave one....so tubbs and edward were welcomedinto princess's life. they started to grow so i got them a 2 ft 60ltr tank which they seemed very happy in.

Questions time

after a while the tank started getting a lot of algae in which it had never done before, the only changes to the tank were a light in the hood.
since it started i have never been able to clean it up and its driving me mad...i can keep it under control with green away but i dont understand where its coming from...Ive recently put them in a 125 ltr tank and started the water cycle from scratch and its slowly started again. i leave their light off all day and they are not in direct sunlight......any ideas??
The water quality is fine though, i test it and there are no problems.

for most of the time i have had them i have fed them freeze dried tubifex, they seem to love it and scoff it down, i was recently told how its made and thats made me wonder if its the cause?? i have cut down on their feeding to try control it but still no joy.

Im thinking of trying this that i have fouond on ebay....what do you think??? Pollywog Amphibian Diets ~ Axolotl, Xenopus, Frog, Newt. Special Formula Pellets | eBay

I also removed the gravel and replaced with pebbles but they went green so now they just have a glass bottom, there isnt mush to trap the bits of **** now so that makes cleaning easier  :Big Grin: 

Cheers guys
Jody

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## packer43064

Hmm.  Algae is usually from a high nitrate level or too much light.  Do you use a filter? What exactly is your nitrate level?

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## Heather

Perhaps a nice plec would help?

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## superjody

nitrate is normally around 5 but my recent test today was 30......
just done a small water change and added some cycle treatment and aqua salt (which wasnt added last time)
Il retest tomorrow or the day after

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## superjody

> Perhaps a nice plec would help?


Plec???

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## Michael

Don't add a pleco to your frog tank. #1 they don't eat algae #2 they get huge and turn aggressive (if a common pleco) #3 your frog will *choke to death* on it if it tries to eat it (and it will eventually).

Oh and if you weren't aware, a pleco is a type of bottom dwelling fish that people put in their aquariums.. commonly sold as a sucker fish or algae eater.. they have no place in most aquariums and grow quite large... in fact most bottom dwelling 'sucker fish' such as corys, plecos, ect have spiny fins or barbs will will choke your frog to death which will result in a dead frog and a dead fish.. sooo.. don't bother.. super bad advice there sorry.

If you want to get rid of algae the best algae cleaner is an algae brush and cutting back on excess light/nutrients.

Personally I get brown algae/diatoms in my frog tank and I just kind of roll with it. I wouldn't add chemicals to get rid of algae.. just brush it off and don't over feed and cut back on light.

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## KingCam

> Plec???


Plecostomus fish

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## superjody

ah, no plec for me then ha ha

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## Michael

Do you have plants? Plants help a lot. Get some nice floating plants like pennywort, frogs love to relax in it and it's a nitrate sucker.

Doing 25% water changes every week will cut down on nitrates too. 30ppm is actually pretty high.

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## superjody

only plastic ones. il look out for some to put in for them, cheers  :Big Grin: 
where can i find pics of other peoples acf set ups on here??? i like to see how others are set up, il put my own pics up soon too

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## Michael

> only plastic ones. il look out for some to put in for them, cheers 
> where can i find pics of other peoples acf set ups on here??? i like to see how others are set up, il put my own pics up soon too



I'd get rid of the plastic.. get real plants. Pennywort is like 50 cents and it grows very quickly.

Here's a picture of my frogs doing their thing in a whole bunch of pennywort.

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## Jen

Algae is a result from over feeding, too much waste in the tank and a lot of light.

Higher frequency of water changes/larger water changes, cut back on feeding and you should see an improvement.

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## Heather

Yikes, I can't imagine them trying to eat one, but definitely don't then  :Embarrassment: .

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## Heather

True, I wouldn't recommend them for a firebelly pond. Prob a dumb rec for those too. I apologize for that one.

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## emberlisa

> I'd get rid of the plastic.. get real plants. Pennywort is like 50 cents and it grows very quickly.
> 
> Here's a picture of my frogs doing their thing in a whole bunch of pennywort.


Pennywort looks nice! Where do you buy it for 50 cents?

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## Michael

LFS here in town. Heck I've gotten it for free from another LFS, all that I have I got for free.. my friends dad gave me a walmart sack full of it and I wound up having to throw a lot of it away.. It's basically a weed and grows very very fast.

ACF do LOVE it though. they will hang out in it and swim through it and rest in it. Mine sleep in it when the lights are out.

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## superjody

Hmmm, did a water change yesterday, added salt and some cycle stuff, retested the water and the nitrita and nitrate are still high.........
Princess's "bits" have swolen up today, never seen this before, any ideas??


heres all 3 in the corner, edward is on the bottom, tubbs is the big one at the bac and princess to the right

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## Michael

That really doesn't look right, superjody.. maybe Terry or Jenste will know..

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## KingCam

Princess definitely has something wrong with her, and "tubs" looks severely bloated!!



Sent from my Epic 4G using Tapatalk 2  :Smile:

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## superjody

yeh tubs is bloated alright, she has been for about 2 years, i tried fixing her but it didnt work, that was going to be my next question.....any suggestions?

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## KingCam

> yeh tubs is bloated alright, she has been for about 2 years, i tried fixing her but it didnt work, that was going to be my next question.....any suggestions?


If I could offer suggestions I totally would, but I know very little about aquatic frogs.

I would encourage you to search the forum a little more, I know many others have had similar problems.  It is very likely you will find a solution without having to wait for someone to post one here.

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## Tony

What have you done to try to cure the bloat to this point? What are you feeding your frogs? If I had to guess about Princess I would say ammonia burn or early red leg. I am not an expert of the disease aspect of these guys though. Any that I lost over the years was due to escapes and cannibalization. Jenna will have a good idea. Perhaps you can just PM her and ask her to take a look.

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## superjody

> What have you done to try to cure the bloat to this point? What are you feeding your frogs? If I had to guess about Princess I would say ammonia burn or early red leg. I am not an expert of the disease aspect of these guys though. Any that I lost over the years was due to escapes and cannibalization. Jenna will have a good idea. Perhaps you can just PM her and ask her to take a look.


I cant remember what i tried now, it was a couple of years ago but it didnt do anything.
Princess's bits cleared up and she seems fine now.
How do i get in touch with jenna to ask her??
cheers

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## Michael

@superjody

I am kind of curious what size aquarium you are keeping your three frogs in? From the pictures it appears the aquarium may be a bit small for three adult frogs which would explain the issues you are having. Also what kind of filtration are you using? It will be hard to treat the frogs if they are living in poor conditions.

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## superjody

> @superjody
> 
> I am kind of curious what size aquarium you are keeping your three frogs in? From the pictures it appears the aquarium may be a bit small for three adult frogs which would explain the issues you are having. Also what kind of filtration are you using? It will be hard to treat the frogs if they are living in poor conditions.


its a 125 ltr which is 32w x 20h and 14d in inches

The tank is a juwel rio 125 with the juwel filter in the corner.

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## superjody

Just did a water test earlier today and all seems normal, a month ago nitrites and nitrates were very high though

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## Michael

An aquarium of that size should be fine for three frogs. I'm not familiar with that filter though, do you know how strong it is G? High Nitrites/Nitrates is actually quite toxic. I'm actually surprised you have any Nitrates at all if there is Nitrite present.

Again Nitrite is quite toxic.

What is normal exactly?

Normal would be 0ppm Ammonia 0ppm Nitrite and >20ppm Nitrate.

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## superjody

No idea what the g is on the filter, its a juwel bioflow 3.0.
My latest test results are 7.2 ph   0 ammonia    0.2 nitrite    10-20 nitrate
when i was having problems last month mynitrate level was 30 then went to 100 the next day, i treated the problem and it went down to 20 the week after, ,the nitrite level was at 2.5 when nitrate was at 100.

I have recently added live plants to the tank, not sure if that will help them out in any way??

had a weird incident the other night, Iv had cloudy water issues for a while but been trying to keep it under control with green away which seemed to clear it up a lot. Anyway, the water hasnt been crystal clear for a while but nowhere near as bad as its been, i do my weekly changes and it clears up a little with the green away then stays as it is which is slightly cloudy. The other night it seemed crystal clear in one corner where 2 new plants are but the rest was a little cloudier, the night after i got home from work and the water was crystal clear........no idea how or why but im not complaining  :Big Grin:

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## Michael

> No idea what the g is on the filter, its a juwel bioflow 3.0.
> My latest test results are 7.2 ph   0 ammonia    0.2 nitrite    10-20 nitrate
> when i was having problems last month mynitrate level was 30 then went to 100 the next day, i treated the problem and it went down to 20 the week after, ,the nitrite level was at 2.5 when nitrate was at 100.


I'm trying to understand the readings is it .2ppm nitrite? Any nitrite = bad.. 100ppm nitrate??? That is insanely high.




> I have recently added live plants to the tank, not sure if that will help them out in any way??


It will help soak up nitrates a bit.. but make sure your lighting is adequate enough for plant growth because decaying plants will only make your water quality worse.




> had a weird incident the other night, Iv had cloudy water issues for a while but been trying to keep it under control with green away which seemed to clear it up a lot. Anyway, the water hasnt been crystal clear for a while but nowhere near as bad as its been, i do my weekly changes and it clears up a little with the green away then stays as it is which is slightly cloudy. The other night it seemed crystal clear in one corner where 2 new plants are but the rest was a little cloudier, the night after i got home from work and the water was crystal clear........no idea how or why but im not complaining


Cloudy water could be a bacterial bloom, did you change the media in your filter maybe?.. generally speaking water clarity and water quality aren't one in the same. ACF are dirty animals as far as waste production I am curious if the filter that came with your tank is powerful enough for 3 ACF.

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## superjody

im using a nutrafin mini master test kit which gives results in mg/L (ppm) NO2, to be honest i dont fully understand everything like that, i just have a basic idea of what the levels should be at.
no idea what caused the nitrate to shoot up like that.
The tank has two tubes which provide plenty of light, that get about 5-6 hours then whatever natural light makes its way to the tank.

I didnt change anything in the filter, it just decided to go cloudy, ive had it that cloudy that you coudlnt see to the back of the tank properly once (before i used green away)
i tested the water and there were no problems with it apart from slightly low ph.

The filter is 12" in height and seems quite powerful, it has6 lots of sponges etc inside

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## Tony

I have some experience with those jewel filters. They are plenty adequate. Basically an internal canister filter with bio media and sponges stacked driven by an internal power head.
I would stay away from those chemicals that "clear" algae. They usually contain ingredients that feed baby algae while killing the mature algae causing you to continue to have to use it. Just let your tank finish cycling and do water changes on a normal schedule.
The plants will help a lot. The more you have the better. When plants are well established they turn ammonia/nitrogen into plant matter. Keep in mind that you need fairly durable or prolific plants to withstand the abuse of the ACFs.

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## bill

I agree with the above, specifically,  stop using chemicals to fix the problem. It's like treating the symptoms of cancer without treating the actual disease. Fix the root cause of the problem first. Let the biologic filter do it's thing and mature on it's own. Adding a sm!all hang on back filter with some carbon in it wouldn't hurt. Remember, algae is, for the most part, a plant. If you have excess nutrients that your plants cannot absorb, guess what is going to utilize them? The main 2 things i see in planted tanks that are plagued by algae are lack of flow and too much light. You said the tank gets natural light, is it near a window? That could be one of your problems. And you said you have 2 tubes, what kind of flourescents are you running?

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## bill

Oh, another thing i would like to add, a cleaning crew is kind of important to keeping algae at bay. Knowing that acf's will try to eat just about everything, i would go with snails, unless they eat snails....lol sorry, i know aquariums (been keeping them for 30 years) but little about acf's. If snails are not on their diet, i would go with nerite snails. They are unable to breed in a freshwater environment, so you won't get an infestation like you would with other species. And there are some pleco species that do not get monstrous,such and the bristlenose or rubber lips plecos. And while they do not eat all algaes, the do in fact eat some kinds.

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## Michael

> Oh, another thing i would like to add, a cleaning crew is kind of important to keeping algae at bay. Knowing that acf's will try to eat just about everything, i would go with snails, unless they eat snails....lol sorry, i know aquariums (been keeping them for 30 years) but little about acf's. If snails are not on their diet, i would go with nerite snails. They are unable to breed in a freshwater environment, so you won't get an infestation like you would with other species. And there are some pleco species that do not get monstrous,such and the bristlenose or rubber lips plecos. And while they do not eat all algaes, the do in fact eat some kinds.


Any type of armored catfish (pleco, oto, ect) are a bad idea because the frogs will eat them and possibly choke since their fins have spines. A larger apple/mystery snail might work but in my own experience with snails sadly my frogs took much pleasure in harassing the snail whenever it came out of it's shell. They bit at the antenna a lot and eventually the snail became so stressed it would not come out of it's shell. I moved it to another tank which had no predatory species but after a week or so it died.. soooo I cannot recommend snails but you may have better luck. I have a rather overactive wild-type ACF whom is highly predatory.

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## bill

Ooops.....i should have clarified. My post about plecos wasn't a recommendation, it was to correct an earlier post about plecos growing monstrous and not eating algae. My bad. Lol without a lot of info on tank setup, my recommendation on this one would be raising the lights, feeding less and add a power head.

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## Michael

> Ooops.....i should have clarified. My post about plecos wasn't a recommendation, it was to correct an earlier post about plecos growing monstrous and not eating algae. My bad. Lol without a lot of info on tank setup, my recommendation on this one would be raising the lights, feeding less and add a power head.


Probably for the best. I've tried to keep stuff with my ACF and all I've ever gotten were fat frogs. lol

Ramshorn snails may be small enough to go unnoticed by ACF but I wonder if they did eat one if they couldn't digest their shell? I keep ramshorns out of my ACF tank personally.. I do keep ghost shrimp with my ACF for clean up but they do wind up as food periodically but I only ever need to replace them once a month or so and at 33cents each.. can't really complain.

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## bill

Ghost shrimp would work to control algae and make a nice snack. But i'm not sure if they are plentiful in the uk. The ghost shrimp we get here in the us are indigenous to the southeastern us. Size was a consideration in my suggestion of nerites. They do not get big at all. I figured the frogs would just think it's a rock.....lol

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## superjody

Il stop with the green away then and im going to add a lot more natural plants into the tank, just need a way of securing them.........
the tank has 2 tubes for light, il have to check what poewr they are.
it is not in direct light really but some sunlight can get to it (when we do actually get some sun ha ha)
Cheers for these replies, really appreciate the answers/suggestions

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## bill

I would recommend something from the anubias family. You can tie or super glue them to rocks for easy placement.  For tying, you can use fishing line or cotton thread. Super glue is my fav method, but it can leave an ugly white residue. 
And duh, i forgot you were in the uk when i asked about sunlight......lol also, get some floating plants like duckweed or any of the salvinia species. Floating plants serve a few purposes, they suck up excess nutrients, they filter the light, and they provide natural cover for your frogs. If you still have algae problems, i have other suggestions for you, but start there. Good luck  :Smile:

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## superjody

for two of the plants i made a weight out of plaster but the plaster went soft and flakey in the water......
i then made the weight out of acrylic in work but it wasnt heavy enough to stay put.
im going to look at wood and volcanic rock to tie the plants too.
I did think of glue but wasnt sure if it was safe or not.
i have a bit of pennywort but i need more and then i need to get it tied to something so the filter doesnt pull it towards it

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## Michael

May want to avoid the volcanic rock it's rather rough on frogs fragile skin (and ACF are known to spaz out/crash into objects now and then as you may well know). Stick with driftwood.

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deranged chipmunk

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## bill

Go with the volcanic rock over the wood. Unless it's manzanita wood, which will sink in a couple days. Other woods, like oak, yes even english oak, will take an eternity to sink. Super glue is completely safe. We have been using it in freshwater aquariums for years. And i personally know people who have used it in tanks with acf's in them. Btw......java ferns and bolbitis are other good plants for your tank. Don't worry too ;;much about getting more, it grows rather quickly. A body scrubby or a cut up nylon over the filter intake are both effective for keeping plant debris out of your filter.

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## bill

Just saw the post above......no volcanic rock, go with river pebbles or stones from your garden. Sorry, i know plants and tanks, not acf.....lol thanks to Michael for the frog specific info

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## Michael

> Just saw the post above......no volcanic rock, go with river pebbles or stones from your garden. Sorry, i know plants and tanks, not acf.....lol thanks to Michael for the frog specific info


Not a problem. ACF are *VERY* skittish creatures. They are easily spooked so always avoid sharp objects in tanks that house them.

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## Tony

I just use plants that can handle floating like elodea, wisteria, and hornwort. All three are dirt cheap, grow like weeds (because they are weeds), and can live just fine uprooted. Frog behavior is a night and day difference with the plants in there. 
If you’re hell-bent on weighing plants down, river stones from the craft store are a good option. You can use hot glue also. I have a java fern that is 10 years old and has been hot glued to a stone since day one.

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## Michael

> I just use plants that can handle floating like elodea, wisteria, and hornwort. All three are dirt cheap, grow like weeds (because they are weeds), and can live just fine uprooted. Frog behavior is a night and day difference with the plants in there. 
> If you’re hell-bent on weighing plants down, river stones from the craft store are a good option. You can use hot glue also. I have a java fern that is 10 years old and has been hot glued to a stone since day one.


They love floating plants, it's true. They will bask in them, especially at night, they will sleep in them with their noses above the water. I think it's a good idea for all ACF to have them, it seems to make for happier frogs. I personally leave pennywort and wisteria in my tank floating for them to relax in.

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