Do fire bellied toads need cycled water? or can you just put in the water? also how do you clean their tanks? I plan on making a half land and half water habitat.
For mine I just used treated water. I didn't cycle it and I never had any problems.
Welcome to the forum btw!!
I think FBT's have a pretty good tolerance for municipal water even if it's used straight out of the tap. However, many municipal water systems in my area tend to be very alkaline. I used to use tap water for mine, that I'd let stand in a bucket for several days to gas off the chlorine. One of my FBT's though stayed very dark skinned and I thought it was just a skin disease. But several times I had him in distilled water and notice he greened up like the other FBT. I quit using tap water and he's been green ever since. So I suspect it was the alkalinity though the other was never affected with dark skin so it's not definitive.
I use either distilled water or spring water from the discount stores (Wal-mart). Distilled is almost always neutral PH and spring water just slightly acidic, which I think is good. But if you are going to stick with tap water, then I'd still recommend letting it sit in a bucket a few days before using. But as your water may be different than mine and others, results my differ. You can always adjust the PH of tap water, but I think that's too much trouble and money considering how cheap distilled or spring water is.
If you don't use natural gravel as a base for your viv then I'd probably not go with distilled and stick to spring water or such.
Privet01 do you mind me asking what the brand is or what the label says on your spring water. And not to hijack a thread this is just quick question, how bad is the fluoride in springwater for the frogs? I have some Canadian spring water but it says it has fluoride ion: 0.08ppm and dissolved mineral content: 155ppm, is this ok to use?
I don't have a gallon of spring water around right now. Normally I use distilled of which I have several around and they are just the "Great Value" brand that is common to the Wal-mart stores here in the US. I suspect the spring water I used was the same "Great Value" brand. But any brand of real spring water you are willing to drink yourself, is probably good enough for your FBT's, IMO.
Generally distilled is going to be pretty void of any impurities other than what it gets from the container it's in. However as I've mentioned before, as it is virtually pure water, the ph can swing pretty drastically depending on the stuff in your viv. Or at least that's what I've read others say. I don't know that as a fact, but it sounds reasonable from what little I learned in chemistry class at college. I feel that the natural stones and gravel in my viv buffer and control the ph adequately.
As for the fluoride..... who knows. Too much bad science being quoted and used by people on both sides of the issue. However fluoride does occur naturally in many water sources all over the world. The EPA in the US does not worry about naturally occurring fluoride until it gets over 4 ppm. so .08 seems very negligible to me, but I'm not an expert by any means.
The 155 ppm on mineral content... well any natural occurring water is going to have minerals in it. With out minerals, most people would not like the taste of their water.
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