African Dwarf Frog and Eclipse System Three

it scares me to think i might be any kind of an authority on ADF's, but because
my wife loves them we have about two dozen now, so,...

[midposted]

"Andrew Johnson" wrote in message
om...
Just curious if anybody can help me out. I bought an Eclipse System
Three (3 gallon) filtered aquarium and an African Dwarf Frog. Right
now I have a plastic plant and a small clay flowerpot for her to hang
out in. I feed her frozen brine shrimp and she spends hours jabbing
her snout into the rocks hunting. Then just relaxes in her cave.

Anyways, I used smooth medium sized (1/4" - 1/2") epoxy coated gravel.
Everything I read about these things says not to use anything sharp
or small for the substrate. They might hurt themseleves or eat eat
it. I also covered the intake with some cheesecloth so an arm or leg
wouldn't get stuck.

not much to worry about in the way of substrate, they will do well in either,
(we have ADF's in both gravel (fine and med) and in sand). unless they are so
sick and lathargic that they cant even get to the surface for air, you have very
little to worry about in the way of them getting sucked into your filter system.

I was orginally thinking about adding a betta. I have one right now
in another 1 gallon aquarium but would buy another. But I have heard
that it is possible that they might not get along too well.

as NetMax has posted, in nature it'd not work, but in hobby, it works fine. the
likelyhood of the ADF's _allowing_ the betta's to pick on them is fairly low in
my experience. (we have a poor goldfish that the little buggers chase around the
tank durring feeding days to keep him away from their food.)

If I don't add the betta, would it be too small to add another frog.
I was also considering adding a couple of ghost shrimp. I am assuming
they pose no threat.

because ADF's are not as dependent of water quality for survival as fish are
(i.e. the frogs dont "breath" the water) keeping a number of them together is
not much of a problem. from our experience the biggest problem with overcrowding
is making sure everyone gets their fair share of food. we've kept over a dozen
in a 10gal, though 6-8 usually works the best in most takes. for a 3 gallon with
a filteration system i would venture to say that 2 or 3 with a betta would work
fine.

i would avoid the ghost shrimp, (been there, tried that) they'll hunt them down
and pick them appart at the start. after a while, those that survive the initial
onslaught of the first couple days (if any) would generally be okay and have
very little harrasment from either the betta or the ADF's,... then they'd just
die. ghost shrimp seem to be something of a quirk when it comes to being able to
keep them. i've been trying for the past few months to come up with a way of
making it work in a five gallon bucket experiment, i've had one group that
breed, then they all died off. *shrug*. still trying.


Does anybody else here have any other ideas what I could add without
overcrowding the tank?

a pair of guppies might help to keep the ADF's fed, ;-)

I also would appreciate any ideas for a live plant.

sorry, i'm still working on that too, seems the only thing i can keep alive is
frogs and fish. ;-)

hope this helps you some andrew, best of luck. :-)

tedd.