Thread: New Tank
View Single Post
  #23  
Old July 16th, 2012, 09:56 AM
ownedbycats's Avatar
ownedbycats ownedbycats is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Ontario
Posts: 854
Near Disaster

This is the near disaster I mentioned in the last post. (I'm also posting another couple shrimp pictures just because.) Everyone survived, miraculously without injury.

I woke Friday night to Dad pounding on my door. I thought my alarm clock had failed to go off, and told him something along the lines of "I'm up, go 'way, I'll get dressed". Dad insisted I open my door, and I checked my clock, it was too early for work. I opened the door and Dad is standing there with a glass in his hand and in the glass in a little bit of tapwater was my smallest frog! Half asleepI dumped the frog back in the tank and went to bed, and pieced together this story the next morning:
Mom had seen Misty and MooBoots sitting side by side staring at something under the shelves by her door. She investigated because usually Misty and MooBoots are incapable of sitting side by side without a fight. Only at mealtimes do they manage to coexist in near proximity without swats being exchanged, and even then Misty can't resist the occasional grumble. Mom found one of my frogs hopping along. Keeping curious cats back, she called for Dad to come upstairs and help. Dad, unaware of exactly what the cats were hunting, told her to leave them alone they were perfectly capable hunters and could kill whatever it was on their own. Mom insisted he come up because she couldn't keep the cats back and catch the frog at the same time, so Dad grumbled his way upstairs, only to be completely surprised to see one of my frogs hopping along, a little frantically by now. To get there, the frog had to have scrambled out of the half inch space left by my lid, dropped 12 inches to my dresser top, dropped approximately another 3 feet to the floor, crawled under my door, and hopped another six or seven feet, avoiding the cats those last few feet. Amazingly, the frog is swimming and eating and all limbs appear to be working.
The next day I was awake enough to realize something must have made the frog unhappy enough to leave the tank. I checked all the water parameters (pH, nitrite, nitrate,) they were all normal. Then I thought to check the temperature. The heat wave raised the temperature of the tank by about four degrees, and my glass lid insulated the water so it wasn't cooling down. I worried about keeping the tank warm enough, I never thought to worry about overheating in Canada, but then sustained temperatures over 30C are really unusual for us. According to the weatherman, we usually get 14 over 30C days all year, We have already reached 16 and still have half the summer yet to go. Now I know the problem, the tank is cooled down, and the gap in back is temporarily closed with a piece of plastic canvas until I can come up with a more permanent solution.
Attached Images
  
__________________
Dr. Seuss~DLH (brother's cat)~June 2007-
Misty~DSH (my cat & Mooby's mom)-?- Sept. 15, 2014
MooBoots(Mooby) ~ DMH(Mom's cat)~July 21, 2008-
Sunshine~ Golden retriever X white german sheperd (Dad's dog)~October 24, 2008-
Reply With Quote