Hello from a new frog keeper in London!

[jenny7478]

Hello from London!

We have recently acquired a fantastic looking adult-male horned frog; meet Sancho Panza:





Apologies in advance for a long-ish post, but being new to keeping frogs, one of the things that I guess I found a little surprising is that the information available about keeping horned frogs is quite varied, and not always consistent.

Sancho seems healthy and is eating very well, but it has just started to get cold here in the UK and the temperature in the tank is on the low side. There's obviously a huge wealth of knowledge on this great forum so any thoughts on how best to address this would be gratefully appreciated.

Our current set up is a plastic tank with a heat mat under the tank and a coco husk/coco bark substrate.

1. Tank - some of the information suggests a glass tank would help retain heat better?

2. Heating - is it better to use some form of light (such as the The Exo Terra Infra Red Heat Bulb which emits infrared heat waves) or to try and incorporate a second heat mat, maybe on the side of the tank?

Finally, can anyone tell me what sort of horned frog Sancho is? He has an unusual hard plate on this back - shaped like the wide end of an oak leaf - and I haven't been able to find any pictures of horned frogs with this feature (I will try and take another photo that shows this).

And finally finally (!) just wanted to say what a great site this is - you guys in the US are so much more into keeping frogs and reptiles, and it's great that there's so a virtual community where you can share your passion!

Jenny.