The Death of Euripides

When I returned home after vacation I discovered that one of my frogs had passed away. We really don't know from what, and we probably never will. It doesn't seem they weren't over or underfed. And we're fairly certain that he was alive at least 5 days before the discovery. I was sad to see Euripides had died. I was also more shocked to see the disaster of a tank. Both the heater and the light were and are functioning properly as far as I can tell. But the large leaves on the plants have begun to have holes as well as looking brown, a symptom of the leaf rather than the entire plant, as a matter of fact the rest of the plant looks quite well. Not knowing if the state of the tank being the cod, or the death being the cause of high levels, I removed the living frog Sophocles to their old bowl with fresh water. (definitely not a good idea with fish, but the frogs are a bit heartier). After buying testing supplies I compared both of the current tanks. One of the larger problems being the hardness of the water. I also noted how high the Nitrate and Nitrite levels in the bad tank were, could have been the cod, not likely because, neither Sophocles nor the chorus of snails in the tank died. But the Nitrate/Nitrite levels are generally caused or increased by a dead specimen. However, it does seem that there is or, hopefully, was a fungal infection. I have treated the water with anti fungal drops, which I hope will rid the tank of any remaining fungal infection.

Anyhow, I am happy to report that the tank looks much better now. We got a piece of drift wood, apparently that helps with the hard water, and a rock, cause it looked cool, and was about a buck. As well as some softened water, and more drops for stuff like the pH. We boiled the rock and the drift wood (cleans them, gets the funny discolored water thing out of the drift wood before putting it in the tank, and cleans all of it (a correct pre-insertion procedure). And as we were cleaning the gravel the correct way, with a siphon we discovered that it was totally wicked gross, and decided that it should really just be rinsed, since the siphon wasn't actually sucking up the gravel anyway, then since we were completely rising it all, we might as well boil the gravel too--which was totally disgusting.

But, the tank looks clean, the plans are pruned and healthy-looking. In two weeks, assuming the tank seems to stabilize and things are going well, I will adopt a new frog. At some point i may go up to a 5G tank, and get a water filter and what not, with a few fish. But, we'll see.

It should be noted if for some reason some random person, or even not, is reading about this and thinking it good advice for fish/aquatic frog tank care. It's not. As a matter of fact it's mostly what they tell you not to do because of 'new tank syndrome', where it's so sterile that the the necessary bacteria which allows the tank to really take off, can't grow. And once you've got a tank going it's best to keep it even if you've got some sort of massive problem. And one should definitely clean their tank more than myself.