Green & Golden Bell frog in substandard housing

[EmJay]

Sooo... our frog-sitting turned into frog owning, and there was I with *no* idea what I was doing...

Our golden bell (imaginatively named "Froggley") seemed reasonably happy for some months in a large glass aquarium with land, water, plants... but then we moved house, and the aquarium couldn't come with us. Currently she (pretty sure it's a 'she') is in a generic, ovaloid, plastic "small pet tank" with a hinged lid that makes siphoning a pain, and an uneven floor that makes a decent land/water division almost impossible. It's also horrible to clean, so I'm having minor conniptions about the hygiene in there. Switching out the water involves a full empty each time as the pebble substrate collects so much gunk.

I don't have a lot of spare money at the moment (renovations, ugh), so much as I would like to just dash out and buy a full set-up, it's out of the question (and would rile my other half!), so I'm wondering how to improve the living conditions. I have my eye on some second-hand terraria in online auctions, but if and when I get one, what's the number one thing to do to create a healthy home - primarily focusing on water quality? Waterfall filter? Pump? What's with the removable bottom grate-thingy they advertise? Help!

(Also - Froggley looks like she's gone into hibernation or something. :-/ Our house is cold, routinely 15-16 dec Celsius in the day. She didn't have anywhere to hide when we put her in the new tank, so we put in a little aquarium castle as a stop-gap, and now she's up in there and won't come out! I'd leave her to it, but I'm worried that the castle badly needs a clean! Argh! I feel like a very bad pet owner right now...)

[EmJay]

(Also - Froggley looks like she's gone into hibernation or something. :-/ Our house is cold, routinely 15-16 dec Celsius in the day. She didn't have anywhere to hide when we put her in the new tank, so we put in a little aquarium castle as a stop-gap, and now she's up in there and won't come out! I'd leave her to it, but I'm worried that the castle badly needs a clean!)

Turns out she's not hibernating; I cleaned the tank yesterday and left it all pristine, and got up this morning to find mucky footprints up the wall and bits of potting mix in the water. Froggley is now hiding out in a semi-submerged cave made out of rocks, so I managed to get the castle out for cleaning (boy, was it *gross*!). Not sure I'm going to bother putting it back in at this rate, might just stick to rock furniture.

I'm a bit worried about the fern though; I put it in on the assumption Froggley was going to stay in the castle and wouldn't do her usual of "Dirt under plant? I'm all in that!" *grub grub grub* But she did, so now I'm concerned that there may be fertilisers in it - although I've used that brand of baby plants before with no issue. I might try and get some sphagnum moss or something to pad it in.