pyxie question

[GrifTheGreat]

Read this http://www.frogforum.net/african-bul...caresheet.html

I can honestly say that your first Pyxi most likely became ill due to temps being far too low. You cant keep a Pyxi at room temp. They must have 80° to near 90° temps and humidity from 75% to 90%.

Keep the frog in a room where your cat CAN'T get in.

[bullfrog1986]

For advice does site is very good its helped me loads very temps and humidity.. or tho getting both of them spot on isn't always easy unless you have a fogger or something.

[SCF]

Don't use sphagnum moss in the substrate. I don't know if you saw the thread one or two up from this one about it being eaten resulting in prolapse.

[Starforce2]

Ok. Well, if I can get a frog that eats aggressively I can feed it outside it's cage in a clean plastic container or aquarium which would mean no food in the cage for it to eat and thus eat moss with it. The first frog I had did this. Though I had little to no moss he or she would eat no matter where and if a superworm or night crawler started digging out of harms way and I went in to flip it back into the frogs reach I would get my finger slapped with it's tongue all the time. The second frog was a total coward and would back up from a worm so feeding it was a game of pissing off the frog till it attacked the worm and ate it. It was very time consuming and annoying and how it managed to double in size over a year with such poor eating habits is beyond me. This time around I am going to ask to see it eat before I buy. My second one would ignore crickets and only willingly eat superworms which isn't healthy to have all the time. It was even afraid of small mice. thankfully my pacman doesn't have this problem and was more than happy to eat it instead. The problem is this also meant if I disturbed the frog to drain the excess water out of the cage so the super worms wouldn't die instantly or take it to another container I couldn't get it to eat anything so night crawlers were about the only thing I could use. Most vids I've seen of people feeding pyxies they have no problems with moving them to an empty bin to feed so I dunno why mine was such a mental case. Bad luck I guess.

When heating a pyxies cage up do I need to use a light or is it better to use a non-light emitting heater, such as a low wattage ceramic? I can easily wrap a caged ceramic heater in screen to keep the frog from jumping into it since they certainly can jump fairly high when young.

[demon amphibians]

Ok. Well, if I can get a frog that eats aggressively I can feed it outside it's cage in a clean plastic container or aquarium which would mean no food in the cage for it to eat and thus eat moss with it. The first frog I had did this. Though I had little to no moss he or she would eat no matter where and if a superworm or night crawler started digging out of harms way and I went in to flip it back into the frogs reach I would get my finger slapped with it's tongue all the time. The second frog was a total coward and would back up from a worm so feeding it was a game of pissing off the frog till it attacked the worm and ate it. It was very time consuming and annoying and how it managed to double in size over a year with such poor eating habits is beyond me. This time around I am going to ask to see it eat before I buy. My second one would ignore crickets and only willingly eat superworms which isn't healthy to have all the time. It was even afraid of small mice. thankfully my pacman doesn't have this problem and was more than happy to eat it instead. The problem is this also meant if I disturbed the frog to drain the excess water out of the cage so the super worms wouldn't die instantly or take it to another container I couldn't get it to eat anything so night crawlers were about the only thing I could use. Most vids I've seen of people feeding pyxies they have no problems with moving them to an empty bin to feed so I dunno why mine was such a mental case. Bad luck I guess.

When heating a pyxies cage up do I need to use a light or is it better to use a non-light emitting heater, such as a low wattage ceramic? I can easily wrap a caged ceramic heater in screen to keep the frog from jumping into it since they certainly can jump fairly high when young.

what you said about removing your frog from its tank and feeding it in a separate area were it can't ingest substrate is a very good move. I do that with my male pixie as well and he has gotten so accustom to it that when i bring him out of his cage he knows its time to eat. It makes it easier for him to corner his prey and he actually eats more now then when i was feeding him in is tank. I will only put him in his feeding bin for 15 minutes or until he eats what he wants and losses interest.

I wish i could feed my other frogs with this method but they like to be left alone when they eat. I can even hand feed my American bull frog But when i take it out of its tank it wants nothing to do with eating.
I also noticed that the closer the temp is to 90 the more they seem to want to eat. If the temp is closer to 80 he wants nothing to do with food even if it has been days since i feed him. I use a ceramic black light which gives adequate heat and the light doesn't seem to bother him i use box tape to cover about 2/3s of the top of his tank to keep in humidity. I do allow some ventilation. I prefer a heat light apposed to a heat mat at the bottom because when they dig down into the substrate the mat keeps the substrate dry and they will dehydrate. When the heat comes from the top your substrate might dry out on top but keeps somewhat moist the deeper they go. None the less you still want to mist the substrate regularly regardless of what you use.

with these guys it is really trial and error. Just by reading this thread i think you will do just fine on the second go. There is good info is this thread.

[Starforce2]

Yea, I wanted to do that with my second pyxie but no-go, he just wanted to escape. I am curious to the size of the tank and the ceramic emitter. Want to get an idea of what I need to use to attain that temp. A plastic tote should hold heat well but I need to be quite careful after a certain size heater as it can destroy the cage roof with it's powerfull heat. Undertank is obviously a no-go on a plastic cage anyways and I wont even be attempting it, and I don't use any type of heat rocks. The plastic tote I have is 18x23x15 inches roughly. Also, how much of your cage is 90 or nearly so? Do you try to heat the whole thing or should there just be a warm spot like with most reptiles?

[Eel Noob]

I live in MN as well and has never had to use heat lamps. I have used heatmats on the side of the tank before but now that I have all my frogs and fishes in their own room I just run a room heater.

BTW these frogs are not from the swamps of Africa so IMO you don't have to worry about humidity, at least I don't. If you look at the videos and pictures of where these frogs are from, these places are usually dry places with just a small puddle here and there and they all dry up very quick.