today i wanted to take some new pictures of charlie for this thread so i took the camera out and charlie was lying on top of his thermometer. it was so cute. i could only get pictures of him with his head on there though. but he had been getting his whole body up there. i also got a cool video of him but i don't think videos can be uploaded directly on here? anyways the pictures are a little blurry but here they are.

charlie is full of personality and flares like crazy when i bring the camera out. he really really hates my camera, i think the flash scares him. but i got a few good pictures of him flaring today.

i rearrange my tank every week when i do a water change just to keep things interesting. but this week i really like how it turned out

as you can see i make a lot of my own decor (from craft mesh) and my own tank baffle (made from mesh and panty hose) i think i will do a whole post about that another time. another thing i wanted to talk about is my marimo only tank. i keep forgetting to get pictures but this weekend its supposed to be nicer out so i think i want to put white sand on the bottom of the kritter keeper and maybe add a rock to it or something. i don't know i just want to make it look more decorative because right now its on the window sill in the living room and it looks kinda dumb as just a couple green balls in a kritter keeper. i think i might add some sea shells too so it will appear as if snails live in there too. i would rather it look more like a mini aquarium or something. i'll definitely take some before pictures before i mess with it and some after pictures and maybe even some during pictures.

here are the rest of the picture of charlie that i took today. i still have more recent ones to upload as well. but they weren't taken today.

 

this has been delayed a day because i got sick don't really know what it is, my only symptom is vomiting and a little fatigue. the only time i feel "sick" is when the nausea comes on and then as soon as i vomit i feel fine. so hopefully i start feeling better soon so i can get back to my fish!

now on to the fish news!

i did a water change yesterday and i think this is my favorite setup i've ever had.

charlie hasn't done anything new or interesting but when i was taking his post water change pictures i noticed how long his fins have gotten. hes a veiltail but wow hes got some majestical fins. i'll do a before and after picture

here is before

and here is after

wow its crazy what a year of growth will do.

i spent saturday evening and most of the day sunday working on my marimo jar. i have an old sand box so i just took some sand from there because i thought a sand bottom would look really nice but i'm kind of disappointed. its regular play sand but i would have liked it to be white sand. it took me forever to rinse it and i had to rinse it so much i kinda think its going to effect the water bill. after that it was starting to get dark and the water was very cold so i let it sit over night. i had originally wanted river rock in it but the neck of the jar is skinny so it was hard to find a good rock, there ended up being only one rock that i liked but there was duck poop on it and i didn't feel like scrubbing poop off a rock so i nixed that idea. i was a bit stumped because i had really wanted a rock decoration but we used to have flower beds lined with lava rocks and we still have some in the yard so i decided to use those! and wow its beautiful i wish i could have some lava rock in charlies tank but they are so rough it would shred the crap out of his fins. so after i picked my rocks i soaked them in water overnight and then used my fish tank tooth brush to scrub all the yuck off and then soaked them in boiling water. once it cooled i began assembling. and at the suggestion of my mom i added a bamboo stick! overall i really love it, the only issues i have is the bamboo roots showing (i'm going to need more sand) and the color of the sand. other than that i love it. so now i'll show the pictures!

this is what i originally had the marimo in, it was just the marimo and water.

and here is me rinsing the water and then the completed jar

and now here are some highlights from charlies water change photoshoot.

 

because i am sick and bored to tears and have nothing but time on my hands while i lay in bed i am going to give the history of charlie and chewy whom i mostly call chu. chu is my almost 6 year old bird. i had chu when i had my first betta harlequin but i don't really remember chu having much interest in her. i introduced chu to charlie the day i brought him home. he watched charlie swim for a couple seconds and it majorly freaked him out, he spun around and bit me right in the septum. later on i was laying down and i realized chu was being strangely quiet, and that immediately sent up red flags. birds are like kids, if they are quiet, then theres a good chance they are doing something wrong. so i look over and chu is beak to tank watching charlie.

and thus chu's love affair began. he would get pretty upset if he didn't have daily tank watching time. over the past year i've moved the tank location 5 times. chu seems to like it best on my window sill but i'm not keeping charlie in that puny prison. but if i sit next to the tank then chu will still sit there. he doesn't watch charlie as much if i'm not very close to the tank. and in the bigger tank (10g) i think chu is intimidated by the size. but over time my sisters cockatiel has come to like watching charlie as well. here are some tank watching pictures

in this next picture, chu just had a bath, so don't be alarmed at his disheveled look.

 

i was looking through the "please post pics of your betta home here" thread and someone had a tank that had a black covering on like the back and sides and i saw it months ago and lovedddd how it looks so much so i decided to take black construction paper and tape it to the back of the tank. i decided to not do the sides because charlies tank is sort of next to me so i mostly watch him through the sides. unfortunately i don't have any pictures because i've been pretty busy lately. but the other day i worked on my tank hood, making it completely escape proof. my hood is second hand, and whoever had it before me took out like the whole area for the filter, and my filter is a lot smaller than the whole so i glued craft mesh over the holes. but when i tested it after the glue dried i found out my filter was a bit tall so water started spilling over the back and got everywhere the filter can be easily lowered but i'm still not feeling 100% so i haven't actually lowered it. instead i'm using my old diy craft mesh lid. i did take pictures of how i fixed my hood. it was a long process that i tackled while watching a jurassic park marathon.

so heres how it was when i started, i had previously glued craft mesh over some of the holes but left a gap for my bamboo to stick out.

i had planned on gluing the top along the long hole but i realized the sometimes tank water gets there and the glue i used is NOT aquarium safe so instead i sewed another piece of mesh on to it that will stick up,and i was planning on gluing that at the top where NO water gets but the bottle of glue specifically said no to heat and that area gets hot from the lights, but its so tight that i can't fit my finger nail in between it so the glue isn't needed anyways. so next i had to add like 4 rows to the back to it would reach the edge of the tank, and then from there i added on a piece that goes straight down for more stability. and then when i was all done i glued the part that wasn't glued yet. but thats not in the picture.

i also decided to take that horrible filter baffle off. it worked really well but it was just so bulky. instead i just shoved panty hose into the filter and filled the water higher so it was slightly over the out take. i didn't get any pictures of that either yet. and yet another thing i didn't get any pictures of is today for the first time ever i saw charlie hanging out in the mesh tube pyramid i made!! i was excited. hes usually very inquisitive, having to check out anything new i put in the tank the second i get it in there but its been a while (maybe 2-3 weeks) and until today i hadn't seen him go near it. so it was exciting to see him in there. i ran and grabbed my camera but of course the second it turned on he swam away. another cute thing he did today is, well you know those little kids that fall asleep on the edge of the bed and ever so slowly slide off? charlie did that with one of his mesh tubes today. it was so cute. i couldn't stop and REALLY watch him because i was in the middle of making dinner and i had ran to my room to get my water and thats when i saw him slowly sliding out of the tube. when i came back in about an hour later he was happily swimming around.

these aren't new pictures but they are new to this journal haha. heres some various pictures i have of charlie.

this next picture isn't great but i love how his coloring showed up so i just have to share it

this picture isn't great either but i got the reflection of my tv which i thought was funny. i was watching bobs burgers haha.

 

and forgot one picture

i love how his coloring showed

 

i got adf today! today was the day i had been planning on getting them and i got to petco and like usual i couldn't find any employees so i walked around for like 20 minutes just looking around and getting what i needed. and i didn't see any adf and after checking like 4 times i just accepted they didn't have any and stood around looking at fish while i waited for my mom and sister to finish up. and thats when an employee popped out of no where and was like can i help you, so then i told her i was looking for adf and she said they had some and took me over there, they were in a back corner of a tank i just didn't see them. it looked like they only had 2 but i had wanted 4, so i asked if i could have 3 and she looked around the tank and was like "well it looks like we only have 2 but let me look around the tank" and she picked up a decoration and like 10 of them shot out like rockets. so she gave me the 3 but i'm really wishing i would have gotten at least one more. but at that exact moment my mom and sister were like "come on were ready to go!" so i was just like "...ummmmm hold on..." because they didn't even know i was getting frogs. then my mom came around the corner and was like "come on .....what are you doing??" so i was like ".....just getting some frogs...." and she just rolled her eyes haha. but anyways that quick interaction threw me off so that was why i didn't ask for another one, and i also forgot to buy pellets! oops! i have bloodworms though. so i got them home and floated them for probably about 35-45 minutes, dumped 85% of the aids water (the petco water in the bag) and added mine (over the course of like 15 minutes), cupped charlie, rearranged the tank slightly, and then let the frogs loose, about a half hour later i let charlie loose. while the frogs were still in the bag charlie swam up and half flared then stared for a few minutes and then lost interest. when i let the frogs loose, one (the loner) fell straight down on to some driftwood, and the other 2 scattered and it took me quite a while to find them. at that point i also put some bloodworms on a terra cotta saucer, it took the adf forever to find it. over the course of a couple hours i have seen 2 eating, but i have seen lone ones sitting with the bloodworms, but don't know if the third one ate. but its only the first day. after i let charlie back in to the tank it took him at least a half hour to even realize the frogs were in there, and when he saw the first one he swam up to it, their faces were almost touching and it looked like charlie was like ".....wait this thing is alive?!? it moved! what in the crap is that?!" and then he swam away. he could not care less that there are frogs in there (they even laid down together later on!) then charlie saw the bloodworms which was another big fear of mine, and again he couldn't be more uninterested in them. he didn't eat any. the frogs have mostly been lounging, i see them shoot up for air occasionally and shoot back down, all at a million miles an hour haha. and of course i took a ton of pictures, so i'll include those now. some are quite blurry though, i guess today just wasn't a good picture day haha.

 

well i think i might have a method for somewhat telling the frogs apart one spends 15-20 minutes every couple of hours zen posing at the surface, one mainly stays near the food dish and the other stays on the bottom but no where near the food dish. and i got a pretty good look at 2 of them today, one has almost no butt bump at all and one has a pretty pronounced butt bump, so i'm hoping at least one is male although i'm guessing they are far too young to tell for sure yet. today i saw all 3 in the food dish, at different times though. and i only saw 2 actually eat. but theres still blood worms left, so i'm going to assume no ones going hungry. i took a ton of pictures today but once again a lot of them are still blurry, i'm not really sure what i'm doing wrong. today when i turned on the light in the morning charlie was floating with the frog that spends a lot of time near the top, it was cute, i think they were both sleeping. heres a picture of that minus charlie

heres a pretty blurry picture of where one of the other frogs was when i turned on the light

the coconut behind the food dish seems to be a main hangout for the frogs

one of the adf was hanging out under the leaf, which was pretty cute

while taking the previous picture, the flash startled him and he darted down inside of the terra cotta pot and started panicking because he couldn't figure out how to get out, but he got it after a couple seconds

heres one of them hanging out in the popular coconut

heres where the one that hangs out at the top, hangs out

heres some misc. cute pictures

its super hard to see but this frog had a bloodworm stuck to his face haha

and i found one of them in the cutest little hiding spot

 

ok so i have a bit of a problem, i took more pictures haha. but the frogs and charlie keep doing cute things so i basically HAVE to take a picture of it haha.

 

today for the first time i physically saw all 3 eat. so thats good. it seems if i feed them as soon as i turn the light on, they will eat almost immediately. other than that i don't have much news, but of course i have more pictures!

 

well the successes of yesterday have vanished. today i turned on the light and put the blood worms in and about 5 minutes later a little froggy face popped up over the side of the saucer, it was so adorable. that one ate and about 2 minutes after the second one came and ate, by then i located the third one and once again i don't think he realized it was food time. so i was going to move decor so i could get to him and guide him to the food. but when i started moving stuff he darted under the terra cotta pot. no problem. so i lift that up and all 3 are under there, and i can't tell them apart. one takes off, so i guide the other 2 to the food, neither eat. but since i've started typing, 2 more have eaten, so i'm going to hope the third one ate. i really really hope as they grow older i'll be able to tell them apart more, because i want to name them. i still haven't thought of any good names. but i love when they eat, they all get little pot bellies, and a frog with a pot belly is the cutest thing ever. just now i stopped to put a coat of nail polish on, and 2 frogs are back in the food dish eating. at this rate there might not be any left over food today. oh and charlie discovered the blood worms yesterday. he actually ate a couple. he doesn't seem interested in them today.

 

Your frogs are pretty cute! I've been trying to decide if I want tankmates, and what I would get if so... maybe I should consider ADFs myself

 

thanks! i would recommend it and they seem to be one of the most recommended tank mates for bettas. and they are fairly easy to take care of.

 

today the frogs ate all the blood worms on the plate and then spent most of the day laying in the plate. i was concerned i hadn't fed them enough so i fed them a second time, which in hindsight i probably shouldn't have done. it appeared they were just begging and not actually hungry. but i've noticed i have a big fatty, a medium sized one and then a very small one. the very small one (or i sometimes call him the runty one) is a male i'm pretty sure, and i think i will call him sid. the big fatty i'm pretty sure is female, and i sort of like the name shirley, but idk yet. the medium one i have no idea about. and i can only tell sizes when they are all right up next to each other. today i really tried to visually inspect them to look for differences but they all seem to have the exact same markings. so idk about that.

the runty one is also a loner, except when he hangs out with charlie. over the past few days i've seen charlie get unnaturally close to him, but today he went up to the runty ones back and literally rubbed his mouth on it, i thought he was going to bite, but he continued rubbing on the frog, all the way up the frogs back and to his face and rubbed there faces together. then charlie just laid with the frog. i think it was like snuggling. so i guess charlie definitely approves.

in other news, i might stop by petco tomorrow and pick up a couple more frogs. i don't know if its a definite thing though. if i do get them, i'm specifically going to ask for one to be male, one to be female, and then a third one that gender doesn't matter and i'm also going to ask for all of them to be visually different. so i can tell them apart.

and like always here are some cute pictures from today.

and today chu had some time watching the fish tank

 

well my glass jar that has my bamboo and marimo, cracked. i woke up to water all over my window sill. damn. i'm going to need to start looking for a new jar.

in other news i have final names for my frogs. the big fat female is named bev, the one i can't tell the gender is named ed, they are named after ed and bev bighead from rocko's modern life, and the runty boy is named earl. i fasted the frogs on saturday because i'm pretty sure i had over fed them, and charlie fasted on friday. when i fed them today (sunday) they ate all the bloodworms again. so they are growing! today i was watching the frogs eat and a bloodworm had drifted onto ed's back, and earl wanted that bloodworm. so he lunged for it, missed, and bit ed right in the butt. i felt bad, but i laughed pretty hard. after that, since i had physically seen them all eat, i got up to go to the bathroom and when i came back into my room, charlie was swimming away from the blood worm dish as fast as he possibly could.... gee do you think he was eating bloodworms? haha. i swear alls i need to be happy is my family and my pets. i could be dirt poor living in a shack in the woods with no electricity or running water, and as long as i have my family and pets i'll be happy as a clam.

heres some pictures from the last couple days, i think i've gotten the hang of photographing frogs, because i've got some crystal clear pictures. finally!!

look at that cute pot belly!

ok in this next picture bev in floating on the coconut, earl is in the middle and ed is all the way to the right

pretty sure these next 2 pictures are earl.

 

well my frogs have grown, because there no longer is a big fat one, a medium sized one and an itty bitty baby. ed and bev are nearly the exact same size, but earl is still slightly smaller. i can sort of tell ed and bev apart by looking at their stomachs, bev is still bigger than ed's. but i have noticed ed and bev's skin has gotten very dark. earl's is lighter, but i'm not sure if its lighter because thats how it is or if hes getting ready to shed. but this morning it was so cute, earl when to eat a bloodworm and he lunged for it and missed and bit ed right in the foot. poor ed. yesterday earl bit ed in the butt when he missed a bloodworm. so dopey.

 

in my last post i said ed and bev's skin had gotten very dark and they were a lot closer in size. well now i can't tell ed and bev apart at all. they are the exact same size now. so i suspect ed may actually be an edna.. their skin has changed too. now earl's is very dark, and one of ed and bev is dark while one is light. i still don't know if thats their skin color or if one is going to shed or what. i've tried to get pictures of their colors but i guess my camera isn't sensitive enough to pick it up. and i think one of the frogs bit charlie, because one of his fins seems ....different on the bottom. it wouldn't surprise me if he was bit though, ever since he got a taste of bloodworms hes like up their butts while feeding. but i've started feeding him first, and 99% of the time i sit in front of the tank during the whole feeding and distract charlie as necessary. i let eat literally one worm though. i don't think one single worm 6 times a week will bother him. and i think i have decided saturday will be fasting day for them.

well picture time!
i think earl is on the right, so that would make bev on top and ed on bottom

this might be earl

 

wow its been a while! i haven't forgotten about this journal, i just got insanely busy. things have slowed down a bit now. i don't have any brand new pictures, but i have pictures from late june that i took but didn't have time to upload. not much has changed, but i am still pretty sure ed is actually an edna. i haven't been able to sit and watch them like i was but i got a look yesterday and bev and ed (still going to call her ed) are huge. and itty bitty earl is still itty bitty. like a week or 2 ago i was feeding the frogs and one of them ripped the frozen blood worm block from my fingers and took off and hid with it lol! i was quite surprised, so i added another block and when i did a water change later that day i didn't see any left over worms, so their appetite is very good. charlie is such a pest during feeding time though. i constantly have to chase him off so he doesn't eat all the worms or get bit. i probably shouldn't have got adf while i have a red betta, but its doable. they only go after him if he is up their butt during feeding time.

now on to the pictures!

 

well its been a while again. whoops. a bit has changed. i think all 3 frogs might be male. i'm not sure though. i posted a thread on here a while ago but didn't get much of a response. idk. all 3 frogs have a white spot under their arm pit. earl's is a white lump, while the other 2 that i originally thought were female have a flat white spot. like this
View attachment 622529

itty bitty earl is no longer itty bitty, and now i can't tell the frogs apart at all unless i can get all 3 next to each other because earls white spot looks different from the rest.

another change that has happened is i rearranged the tank for the first time since getting the frogs. i used to rearrange it every water change but when i got the frogs i stopped. well i did a water change today and i was really sick of how it looked so i spent a long time rearranging things and adding things and taking things out and i'm so glad i did. it looks so much better and more natural.

before

after

i also think the frogs might be sexually mature. considering the arm pit spots and the past 2 times that i fed them they didn't finish it all. which is unlike them. i had been feeding them once a day 6x a week. so i'm going to switch to every other day feedings. i'm going to use this time to try to get charlie back to eating pellets. since i got the frogs hes only eaten bloodworms which is not ok. i haven't heard my frogs singing though, which i'm dying to hear.

charlie hasn't changed at all. which i think is good, i like him how he is.

heres some pictures i've taken over the last month

 

i don't remember if i said this in my last post, but i've decided to get 2 nerite snails and 4 ghost shrimp! the petco near me doesn't sell them so i'll have to wait until i can get to petsmart. i'm hoping thats soon. in about 11 weeks i'm going to get another petco gift card, and with that i think i'm either toing to get more gravel, or sand, and maybe some driftwood. idk. heres some pictures of my aquarium

in other news i'm getting over a heart break. it started on wednesday morning. i could hear a baby animal crying through my open living room windows but it was so far away it echoed a little and i honestly couldn't tell what kind of animal it was. some time during the afternoon it stopped and i forgot all about it. thursday morning i woke up and my mom said there was a baby kitten in our yard crying but her and my dad couldn't find it. i listened all morning and never heard anything so i honestly figured it probably died (the temp was going from unbearably hot to freezing and it had been thunderstorming) until at 130pm i heard it again. i located it within about 5 minutes (under a bush in my backyard) it wasn't friendly, whenever i lifted up the bush it spit at me. i stayed outside for about an hour and a half until my dad got home, then we spent another hour and a half catching it. it was a fiasco, it got stuck inside our fence, so bad that my dad had to take part of the fence apart to get it out. i cared for the kitten for 3 days and then rehomed it. i love cats and i wanted to keep it. i had gotten quite attached to it in those 3 days.

 

i got my shrimp and snails! they are in a 10g quarantine, because they were in a tank with adf that i'm pretty sure had chytrid. so thats not good. so they are going to be quarantined for 3 months. i ordered a preset heater and a thermometer to monitor the temp.

 

continued

i always heard how much snails poop, but i never understood until i got snails. this is for 2 snails after 2 days.

 

wow its been a long time since i updated and A LOT has changed! so much i don't even know where to start. i hope i don't forget anything. 2 of my shrimp died, the 2 smallest. the other 2 seem to be doing quite well. my 2 nerite snails eat algae wafers (i read this is rare). i added the duckweed and salvinia to my quarantine tank, and then removed it after about 2 weeks. its back in a plastic tub and once the shrimp/snail quarantine is over i think i'm going to try it in my main tank. the q tank has a hob filter and no matter what i did i couldn't keep the plants away from the out take and it was just constantly making a mess and clogging the filter. my snails started mating and leaving eggs everywhere, but i don't really mind. my frogs also started mating but i haven't seen any eggs or tadpoles. i'm honestly not 100% sure on the frogs sex. one of them has arm pit bumps that seem to disappear and reappear randomly. but from the lack of eggs i'm thinking its a boy. and 2 nights ago i heard my frogs singing for the first time! scared the crap out of me because at first i didn't recognize the sound and couldn't figure out what it was.

i really do enjoy my shrimp, but i'm not sure if i'm going to replace them when they die. i have to travel quite a distance to get them and yeah. i think when they die, i'm going to buy 1 more ADF and keep it in the quarantine tank until it can be added to the main tank. but also after quarantine i have been debating getting a couple frogs for in there doing the 3 month quarantine and then adding the other 3 frogs in there and having an adf only tank. or possibly doing a shrimp only tank, but i would have to order the shrimp online which i am not too fond of that idea. but idk i still have like a month and a half of quarantine left and even after i don't have to make a decision right away. a HUGE draw back for me though is i have no where to put a second tank in my room except on the floor which makes water changes a pain. i haven't asked yet but i'm hoping my mom will let me move the tank to the kitchen counter (literally the only other place it could go) but i'm pretty sure shes not going to be ok with that. so idk. i have a bunch of pictures i've been saving for here so without further ado

 

i haven't updated again but for once i've got a good reason. i went through some bad health stuff and then my mom got diagnosed with cancer and had surgery. the only major tank changes are the shrimp and snails were added to my main tank and one shrimp died. oh also i got some live plants! they are betta bulbs. they seem to be doing well.

the frogs failing at mating

my zebra nerites snails stripes started growing in wrong

my live plant

my other live plant

 

I'm still dealing with cancer stuff with my mom and I've been quite depressed lately. I do have lots of pictures though.

 

 

I got 3 new frogs! They came from petsmart. I'll provide more info maybe tomorrow, I'm quite tired now and have a mild migraine.

The last pic is of earl. He was being cute.