Quote Originally Posted by jasonm96 View Post
-Your heat mat is covering too much of the wall
-it's not on a thermostat, it's probably too hot for your frog
... Take the lights off and just use the night lamp, ... but if it drops below 70F in your house, get a thermostat with a night time setting so you can have the heat mat on at night
Jason, the UTH is the smallest size available, sitting at the bottom edge of the glass, and other than moving it an inch left or right (which seems pointless and would destroy & waste the heat mat now) there's nothing I can do to reduce its coverage. I will move the probe and see what it reads above ground, though I've never seen it exceed 82F when checked with temperature guns, and the ExoTerra Rainforest pads are supposed to self-limit to around 80F to begin with. If it turns out to be much higher than that, I'll definitely look into a thermostat. If anything, we've had to supplement the heating rather than limit it, as our building tends to get rather cold this time of the year. We run a half dozen tanks year round with the Rainforest pads in them, all probed and consistently in the 80F range without use of thermostats, and again most of those using at least a basic fluorescent and/or heating bulb to supplement when necessary. Granted, most of those have the UTH under the substrate as they're non-burrowing reptile tanks.

As for the setup -- this seems to be controversial. Some people say the plants help process waste (Pothos plants were actually recommended for Pyxie/Pacman frog tanks, though that's not what I have), maintain humidity and provide cover. They're thriving so far in the tank so I would like to leave them in there unless that changes and/or the frog becomes too large to share the space, though at that point it'll probably be moved to a bigger tank anyway. We have several live-planted tanks now and have had good luck with them, one of those being the Pyxie's 50/50 split tank, which has both semi-aquatic and terrestrial plants thriving in it, even though the dummy tends to trample them from time to time. :P


Quote Originally Posted by monster View Post
Move your frog to a quieter room and cover 3 sides of his enclosure so he cant see out. ... Also even though you say you don't think hes impacted when was the last time you found a poop?
That's actually in the works as I just obtained a suitable tank stand for him yesterday. Despite where the tank is right now, it's actually pretty quiet out here most of the time and I wanted to try and keep him in view from my desk -- but we're going to be covering the sides of the tank and moving him to a quieter/darker area regardless. Hard to say regarding poop-finding, I know he had one the day we put him in the tank, and I *think* I found some last week but it's hard to tell from the damp substrate. We've given him some soaking time in treated water a few times the past week, but nothing at those times at least...