New Tank

[pbpatti]

ownedbycats, thank you for posting all of this, i am finding this thread very interesting. I don't have fish, have no desire to have fish but learning about them is great.

[ownedbycats]

Hazel - I'm pretty sure both my frogs are female (males have a gland behind their front legs that looks like a pale pink dot and neither of mine have a dot) so tadpoles are unlikely.

Patty - I'm glad you're enjoying the thread. I started this thread partly to share what I was learning because I'm finding fish (and frog) keeping really fascinating.
I'm finding there is a lot more to fish keeping than I thought, you don't just dump fish and water in a bowl and feed every day. There's learning about water chemistry, and plants. And each species of fish has slightly different requirements.
Once a tank is up and running maintenance isn't hard, but getting it started is work. It's worth it when you get to see happy fish swimming around doing fishy things.

[ownedbycats]

Update: Frogs and betta lived together peacefully until the beginning of December, when I caught the frogs taking bites out of the betta's tail.
Betta now has his own tank, free of frogs.
Big tank is currently suffering from an outbreak of black beard algae, due to a sudden increase in length of lighting per day.
Lesson: No sudden major changes. I should have extended the lighting period by about 10 -15 minutes, waited a couple days, and then extended it again, etc. giving my plants time to adjust. Better yet, I need to get a light timer that will turn my light on and off at the same time every day.

[hazelrunpack]

I'll bet the betta is relieved to be free of frogs!

Does the black beard algae hurt the critters or just the plants?

[ownedbycats]

Just the plants. It completely covers the leaves so the plants can't get any light. Basically, since I know what caused it, I have to fix my light timing, trim and remove all leaves with BBA on.
I'm trying to figure out if there is any way I can keep the patches on my rock without it spreading to my plants. It actually looks pretty neat on the rock, like a fuzzy outline, and can't damage the rock. Not so neat looking on the plants it is smothering and killing. Healthy plants are green or red, not black.