Quote Originally Posted by snobordnwifey View Post
I posted a couple months ago after one of our ACF's died. We still have one ACF and I'm having a really tough time controlling the ammonia in the tank. It almost always seems to be in the "dangerous" range.
Danger range is any amount of ammonia over zero.

It's only in a semi-dangerous range when I do a full water change/mostly full water change. Even then, it still seems to have issues. I realize that it's not a great idea to do full water changes on a regular basis, though. It takes awhile for the tank to stabilize, right? I was sure he would die a few months ago after our other one died, but he's hung in there and seems to be quite active and happy now.
There is no semi-dangerous range. Any ammonia or nitrite present in a tank is toxic to a frog. Doing 100% water changes may be disrupting the cycling of your tank, also are you treating your water with a dechlorinator? I would recommend SeaChem's Prime because it is not only a dechlorinator and neutralizes heavy metals it ALSO bonds to ammonia transforms it into a much less lethal compound, ammonium.

What can I do to help this water issue? I have taken out the rocks, thinking that the food was falling down into them and rotting (even though I had cleared out a spot so that the food would fall onto the bare tank floor). We now have sand as a substrate. Frog seems to be eating the food up when we feed it. We have a side filter (not sure what it's called). What else can I do to control the ammonia in this tank? It is a 10 gallon tank, but we only have one frog. I didn't realize we needed a bigger tank when we had the two frogs. I never realized that these little grow-a-frogs would grow to require so much more than the company we got them from told us. Nevertheless, I certainly want to take care of the little guy the way he deserves to be taken care of. So, can anyone help me here?

Froggy grandma to Freddy, formerly known as Summer
Sounds like this tank needs to cycle. Having a bare or sand bottom will help with keeping the tank clean but still, you need to cycle this tank. The reason you have ammonia is because the nitrification process has not kicked in that breaks NH3 (Ammonia) down into NO2 (Nitrite) which is then broken down into NO3 (Nitrate) which can be controlled via partial water changes.

I found myself in the same boat you did, I got into frogs and I didn't cycle my tank and I had ammonia present. Luckily I didn't lose any frogs but the tank was a single froglet ACF in 20 gallons and I did a lot of partial water changes. What I would do (and what may have saved my frogs) was I found a friend who had some -used- filter media from a cycle tank and put it in my filter and let it run for a week. Transferring over some beneficial bacteria from another tank jump started my tank and got it fully cycled fast.

I use this method to jump start new tanks, I keep 3 HOB filters on my 20G (I've since moved my frogs to a 40 gallon breeder) running all the time to keep the BB in case I want to start a new tank or lend some BB out to help a friend starting a tank.

Hope this helps.