My Clawed Frog Jumped Out (Still Alive)

[Mentat]

Would call your brother and ensure he used water from frog tank and not the tap. Michael information on tank cycling is important to your frog's well being. When you can, please describe your set-up including number of animals, and then we can make some recommendations for it. Good luck !

[JayFrog]

@Michael - Thank your for your responses! I must have misunderstood what "cycling" meant, in that case, although I do have a filter, I don't think the water has been cycling or possibly it has. Assuming I did my 5 minute research correctly, I would have to have bacteria growing in the filter? Hopefully my frog will be fine being out for that long, he had a lot of dust bunnies when I found him in the kitchen, those dust bunnies are now my second priority.

@Carlos - I was the one who found him in the kitchen and used the tank water to rehydrate him. I told my brother to look after him just in case anything happened. According to him he looks fine now, he's not breathing heavily anymore. I would like to know more about cycling. As Michael mentioned, that may have been a cause for his escape.

As Requested:
- Two clawed frogs, 1 male (the escape artist) and 1 female.
- 3 1/2 gallon tank (will be upgrading to 10 gallon, they are getting big)
- I use a Tom Mini Aquarium filter link: Amazon.com: TOM Aquarium Mini Internal Filter 45gph adjustable flow: Pet Supplies
- I have one live plant and a decorative "rock shelter" for the frogs to enter. It's quite spacious.

[Mentat]

How long are your frogs snout to vent (SVL)? Need that to have an idea of biomass. Recommend tell your brother to release frog back into aquarium now and you to upgrade tank to at least a 15 gal.; much better a 20L.

To simplify the cycling process, your frogs produce urea which is rich in ammonia (very toxic). Some nice bacteria in surfaces (substrate, filter) convert that to nitrites (toxic) and other nice ones convert that to nitrate (only toxic if concentrated). So.. bacteria in your filter and to a lesser extent in your substrate (if any) take care of first two baddies for you.

When both ammonia and nitrites reach zero... your tank is cycled (around 30 days). Then you do required water changes adjusted to biomass in water to reduce nitrates (want to keep below 25ppm for most organisms and try to avoid anything above 50ppm). Some fish do require lower levels, but frogs will be OK. As long as you rinse media in tank water during water change, or don't replace all of it at once, your tank remains cycled. If your filter uses cartridges and you replace them... that will trigger a mini-cycle because you removed the bacteria population in filter.

Try and get new larger set-up as soon as possible. Will need a new filter (yours is too small) and because frogs are messy, a minimun of 2x the filter output is a must (i.e. a 40 gal. filter for a 20L). Since your little filter is "primed" with good bacteria would also transfer to new tank (with old cartridge in use) in conjunction with new filter for first 30 days. That will help prime the new filter and prevent an ammonia/nitrite shock to your frogs. Good luck !

[JayFrog]

I am following up on the cycling to which I'm still new. After the drop my frog took, he is perfectly back to normal, crazy, haha. Anyway, I have the API test kit and it's been a week since I started cycling, feel bad since I've had these frogs quite a while.
PH: 7.4
Ammonia: .25 ppm
Nitrite: .25 ppm

Anything to watch out for or consider?