Reptile & Amphibian Forums

what does a false bottom do? and is my frog really sick because he sits in his water dish? what should i feed my frog??

The false-bottoms are useful when there is a good amount of water flow going through the tank and you do not want stagnant water sitting in it. It allows easy access to the resivoir for removal. As for your frog, it would depend on the species, so not necessarily.
Best,
Justin

I like the false bottom system because it allows you to use water features such as waterfalls etc.... I have three tanks and two are false bottoms with water features. Good luck.

I'm not a big fan of doing this at all. I don't like the idea of recirculating water that has gone through the soil. I did a few waterfalls, and when I did them I mostly put a tubberware tub in the dirt and used that as my resivoir and filled it with rocks and lined with plants. That way I could easily change the water, and it wasn't water that went through my tank all the time.
Best,
Justin

ohhhhh so u can hook up a waterfall/water feature and have the water just soak into the sil to filter it?

Even though you use the false bottom method, you should have a means of removing the old water. This can be done by siphoning the water out, or by having a drain in the bottom of the tank.
Some people use an uplift tube or pvc pipe and run a air-line tubing down it so it reaches the very bottom of the tank and when needed you just siphon out the excess water. Or you can have a good size hole drilled in the bottom and install and bulkhead with a piece of pvc and a pvc ball valve on the bottom side that leads to some type of pail. With the ball valve, you can shut it off when you need to drain the pail. I have three holes drilled in the bottom of mine. One for the drainage, another for the filtration from the small pond, and the last one is for the return line from the wet/dry filter back to the top where the water fall/stream begins.