Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi, i was wondering if its ok to just keep my pacman in water that is shallow enough for him? with like a fake plant to hide under? it just seems like this would be easier to clean his cage out this way, any suggestions? i have used moss and soil, its just too much of a mess!!

This is basically the old method of keeping pac man frogs (one of the old ways was just a little gravel and then enough water to cover the gravel). The downside to this is that due to the large amount of waste they produce you have to clean their cage every day or two. Additionally the frog can get stressed by the lack of ability to hide but otherwise the method will work as long as you keep up on the cleaning.

Ed

As far as I've heard there is also a chance of the frog drowning evein in really shallow water.
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CokeOfMan

I've been keeping them that way for years. Works for me.
But Ed is right...you'll need to change the water often.
If the bacteriae dont kill the frog, the smell will kill you!

so you have been keeping them that way for years? good results? doesn't seem to bother them? just trying to make sure its ok? i have no prob changing the water, its quite easy for me. what do you keep your pacmans in? thnx for all the help

I originally tried that method, but found that my Pac would not take food and would just sit in the corner.

I immediately went back to the coconut bark and he was back to normal. Took all food thrown in the enclosure, and then made himself disappear, burying himself up to the eyes in the coconut.

I won't go any other way now.

I really don't see any good reason for not giving them a place to bury themselves. Many people will say "I do not want my frog to remain buried all the time; I want to see him, so I will not put him in a substrate which he can bury into." If this is the case, I suggest getting a different type of frog, one that does not spend most of its time buried.
This is the honest truth. I had two different horned frogs in the past, that were kept solely in water with some gravel. One died a few months after I acquired it; it had the dreaded 'red leg" with the burst blood vessels, bloatation, etc. The other one died shortly after I got him, trying to pass some gravel after getting impacted from swallowing some in his former home during feeding. I have to doubt that these frogs would be dead today if theyw ere kept in a well-cleaned substrate that allowed dry burying.
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2.1 Ball pythons
1.0 Boa Constrictor Imperator
0.1 albino Cranwell's horned frog
1.0 bearded dragon
1.0 Tiger salamander
1.1 breeding Clawed frogs
1.0 black kittycat
3.1 Oscar cichlids

Red leg is usually a result of an immunosuppresed animal (possibly from stress or other causes) kept in conditions that were not clean enough. The causative bacteria are ubiquitous to the enviroment in which the frogs are kept and can be readily cultured out of any soil based enclosure.

As a counter example I got my first ornata back in 1988 and it died in 1999. That frog was kept in water with very little gravel. I never had the frog swallow gravel as it was fed via tweezers.

Ed

No! Horned frogs need to be able to bury into their substrate. Mine will spend weeks at a time buried. This is their natural behavior, and should not be made unavailable.
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2.1 Ball pythons
1.0 Boa Constrictor Imperator
0.1 albino Cranwell's horned frog
1.0 bearded dragon
1.0 Tiger salamander
1.1 breeding Clawed frogs
1.0 black kittycat
3.1 Oscar cichlids

Okie, i think what the thread starter actually means is just that whether the pacmans would be fine even if they were not given any stuff to burrow into, and just being kept in water. It is a different thing altogether from whether they would be much more happy burrowing. What EDK means i think, is just that even if they were given just water, it would not be harmful to them, and would not certainly cause them to die.