I am thinking of trying again with the pyxie frog. I've had 2, one got sick and started acting weird and refused food, the other got toasted when the cat knocked a heat bulb out of position and it drilled through the plastic water dish and smoked the cage. This time I plan on going custom, as commercial cages just aren't suited to pyxies in minnesota. Screen tops result in a frog that dried up in a corner no matter how big a bowl of water you keep in there because the humidity is 10% because it's -10 outside. So, I plan to use a plastic tote with a large enough hole covered with screen to accommodate a heat lamp, and it shouldn't take much as heat traps in a plastic tote fairly well. So long as I keep that hole as small as possible for the lamp I shouldn't have a humidity problem. So I basically have 2 issues. I need to know much big of a bulb I should use and what type of substrate. Most pyxies I see are kept on a combo of sphagnum and either eco earth of organic potting soil or seed starter which I know to be OK only if it contains no man made additives. I've heard the sphagnum as anti-bacterial properties and is good for frogs (dunno if this is true) and that I should put cork lumps in the water bowl because it leaches this brown substance into the water that is also good? I forget what it's called, comes from using real leaves in the bottom of the cage too but I wont be doing that. (if not I am going to try and go with a large enough water bowl to run a charcoal filter system as I don't want to change water every day because then I need to treat water which is a pain) I am planning to have a lg bucket of tap water sitting for a couple days to get rid of the chlorine. So the second issue is the substrate and if keeping the frog in soil topped with the moss (to help keep the soil moist) like the local pyxie vendor does actually presents an ingestion issue for hand sized frogs which will be eating crickets, super worms and night crawlers. The local store had a store pet kept on soils, gravel and mosses however this frog was big enough to eat gerbils and possibly even small rats so ingestion would have been unlikely for the gravel and mosses would be too small compared to the frog to be a threat. But obviously the smaller the animal the bigger the issue. The frog I start with will likely be about the size of an american softball or baseball. Hearing from someone who's had smaller pyxies on moss would be helpful here.
I guess a 3rd question is what the real temp? It took a 50 halogen bulb 2 inches from the side of a 10 gal topped with a plexiglass top with small air holes to create 88+ degrees and high humidity which would be what you'd get if you lived in a swamp in the middle of Africa. I am guessing based on what the weather would be like in central Africa from what I've seen on nature shows..I know it's hot as heck. I've been told high 70's and low 80's by some and high 80's/low 90's by others (frog "experts"), the second of which seems to be right based on the fact that I know central africa gets really hot. Of course that bulb, when blasted directly into a plastic water dish also creates a hole about an inch deep and a half inch wide...and a whole lot of noxious smoke. I had tried top mounting it but the frog just dried up in it's cocoon due to low ambient humidity, even though it could go in water deep enough to swim and submerge all it wanted. Before I try again I want to build a custom cage that works, because the other one wont. Certainly if I ever need to side mount a bulb like that again I am using a steel water dish..lol This also highlights a very frustrating issue with this hobby. no so called frog care expert giving me the same answer on environmental statistics. I was told the first frog, which got sick, may have gotten sick due to being at room temp, low 70's, and should have been in the high 80's and low 90's while others seem to have them in the high 70's and low 80's with a basking area and still others that say the only frog that should be basking is a wax monkey. I've seen care sheets vary too, on temp. There's a few frogs I'd like to get my hands on (I'll start another thread on those) that I can find jack diddly on..so hopefully I'll be able to get some answers from here.