Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i've seen a few caresheets and japanese websites that say horned frogs can be kept in a tank with just an inch or two of clean water on the bottom shallow enough for them to keep their feet on the bottom, does anybody know if this is the case or has anybody kept them like this? i was thinking it would be easier to keep them clean than in a bed a beast substrate and if you had alot of floating plants and some java moss and stuff in the water, you could have a small land area planted with liverworts and juncus species if they really needed to climb out and an external canister filter to keep the water clean. you could even plant the bottom of the water with dwarf hairgrass and all the plants would help remove waste. the fact that they would be excreting into the water would mean that you dont need to tear the whole tank apart to clean it out just filter the water and siphon it out and replace it every so often.
if anybody has any input id love some thoughts on the subject.

you could also have a carpet of Cladophora aegagropila on the bottom to absorb even more waste and a false bottom with the filter input under the Cladophora so the water was pulled down through it adding an extra layer of biological filtration to your pac mans eco system. neocardina shrimp could also live in the water as a cleanup crew eating debris from the frog and its food. alternatively a dense layer of pistia strataiotes or azolla on the surface would also remove waste chemicals from the water and convert them into bio mass but alos provide a layer for food insects to seek refuge on to prevent them drowining and fowling the water, in theory these floating plants would also allow the pac man to feel more secure as it would be just like being hidden in a layer of substrate except cleaner and easier to heat with a thermostatically controlled aquarium heater.

Sounds cool post pics!

while i am sure that the setup could be achived and the frog could thrive, in my experience pacmans like burrow and be able to hide. keeping them in an aquarium with a few inches of soil, a water bowl, and some plants seems to work best. if you use a large enough tank, you could set it up both ways, giving the frog an option to what he/she prefers. my main concern would be keeping the frog away from a water heater, since you would have to use a submersible. the false bottom tank would probaly take care of that issue, but if you gave the frog a option between an all land with soil substrate and water bowl and an all or mainly water tank with plants, i beleive the frog would choose the terrestrial setup over the aquatic.
you described the tank you want to setup with a lot of detail and seemed to have it planned out quite well, i just think you are trying it put the wrong species of frog in a tank not suited to the frogs needs. going with a semi-aquatic species would be a better choice, you could even try pixie frogs in that style setup, they are more apt to a primarily aquatic setup. you could also go with smokey jungle frogs, american bullfrogs, greenfrogs, leapord frogs, pickerel frogs, pig frogs, budgetts frogs, firebelly toads and newts, axolotols, ect. the only suggestion i would give if you choose one of these frogs would be to kepp the water level in the 3-6" range as opposed to 1-2" for a pacman.
whether or not you try it with a pacman is your decision, i would like to here your decision though, and if you create the tank, post some ppics for us to see.
good luck

Keeping pac-man frogs in shallow water is how a lot people would keep them in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is when there was the first craze on keeping them and then they became a somewhat uncommon until the early 2000 when there was a big trend to keep them in terraria.
If you keep up with the water changes, they do just fine in these setups. (I kept some of my first ones back in the late 1980s in these setups for a number of years).

Ed

ive not decided wether or not to build a tank like this for one yet but i was in the bookshop today and there were a couple of books that mentioned keeping them in shallow water. i guess if there is a land section for them it would be a pretty big hint if they spent most of their time on it and you could move them into a terrestrial set up with a smaller water dish and put a budgetts or other frog in the pool one. a couple of sources i've found on the internet seem to suggest that certain horned frogs when given a choice have spent most of their time in water but ultimately it might vary between individuals. http://www.hilozoo.com/animals/AO_hrnd_frog.htm says that their ornata "spent most of the time soaking in water to keep her skin from drying out". perhaos the reason we dont see them spending more time in their water dishes in eco earth set ups is that the water is too cold as in budgetts frogs a common cause of death is water being too cold and a water dish resting on several inches of eco earth substrate on a heat mat might not be heated that effectively (i'm aware that heatmats aren't ideal for ceratophrys as they dig to escape heat but it seems like alot of people use them) whereas in the wild these frogs live in pretty shallow water which would get quite hot in the tropical sun.

Actually in the wild outside of the breeding season these frogs live terrestrially burrowed about 2/3 of the way into the ground and not in shallow water heated by the sun....

In general if your enclosure doesn't get below 65 F you do not need to heat a Ceratophrys. At 65 F they will become a lot less active and will significantly reduce thier caloric intake but do just fine particuarly as part of a seasonal swing.. There seems to be a big trend to keeping the frogs in the upper 70s and low to mid 80s all year round which is really unnecessary.

Ed

i realise my post didnt make it very clear, i meant that budgetts frogs spend most of their time in shallow water which im pretty sure they do when not aestivating and in the areas where their ranges overlap horned frogs are often found in the same shallow pond margins as budgetts but i do acknowledge that they also can spend most of their time in the ground, it seems like it might vary between individual specimens and there may be other factors affecting their choice such as predation or lack of food in the water. i think i will experiment with this set up but have the option of a terrestrial environment open should the need arise.