African Clawed frog safe fish?

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Smaug21

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Oct 11, 2006
Messages
39
Location
Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Unfortunately when i came home tonight my last goldfish was on his last legs(fins?). He's been swimming very odd the last few days, I thought he was done about 3 days ago when he started not staying in the normal areas in the middle and just floated at the top or bottom. Then 2 days ago he started floating on his side at the top of the tank...needless to say at that point i was really worried. I did a PWC and put in some Stress coat stuff that i have. At that point he perked up a bit, and looked pretty good this morning and i was gonna run some more water changes and maybe post on here if he stayed the same. But i get home tonight and he's floating at the top...and he's covered in bubbles..beyond that he looked fine. Rather then letting him suffer i euthanized him about 2 hours ago.

Unlike some other fish i've had in the distant past I'm not worried about anything that i did wrong, i got him and a buddy goldfish 5 years ago when i moved into my dorm room and some other freshmen we're going to flush them! :evil: While it's not even up to the average of 8yrs? it's a lot longer then most goldfish are alive, and he was pretty well cared for.

This might seem like an odd opening to a post on African clawed frogs but his tank-mate was a pretty big African clawed frog, only about 1yr younger then the goldfish, so if your counting thats 4yrs, and I'm wondering what i could get to keep him company now. I may just move him to a 10g and let him live alone, but it seems to me he'd do better with a bit of motion and change in his life. For a long time i didn't think i could keep him with anything because i thought he'd eat anything you'd put in, but after reading good things about goldfish doing well with them, i combined my 2 tanks into the one 15g, and they lived pretty well for about 3 years and atleast 2 full moves. I've thought about just getting more goldfish, but i thought i'd ask on here.

I'm probably gonna pull down the whole tank and refurbish it (clean the algea off the fake rock, sift the gravel and get back to only the big "natural" gravel instead of the little blue stuff, etc.) so i can set it up for whatever i decide to do.

So any suggestions?
 
With ACFs you are fairly limited with what fish can live with them. I would recommend more gold fish. I have 3 very large ACFs with 3 gouramis that seem to be fine also. The frogs finally ate the last of the mollies we put in (I thought the last one was going to be fine since the first 2 disappeared within 24 hours, and its been several weeks or more but... that mollie didn't just up and walk out of the tank :))

The advice given to me was not to get anything they could possibly fit in their mouths and to remember that their mouths are a LOT bigger than you think!!
 
Yeah i know..in fact..it's kind of a morbid tale seeing as how it just happened a few hours ago... but!

What finally prompted me to euthanize the goldfish was what happened a little after i got home. I had already started to think about it and other options when i look in the tank, and my frog has caught this 2.5' or however goldfish in his arms. He had him in like a tackle grip with those really tiny front legs. I seriously doubt that he could have eaten him, but knowing the frog i got the feeling he was seriously gonna try. So i removed the goldfish from the tank and got my stuff together.

I'm thinking maybe i'll just finish what i was doing with the 10g tank and put him in there, any thoughts on how social they are? If i keep him alone will he still make my room sound like a tropical rainforest at night? lol!
 
mine eat anything they can not fit in there mouth... i feed mine goldfish :evil: did fine with a 5 inch pleco though.

like i said if they can fit it in there mouth they will eat it, that is my experience
 
I have my ACF, Kermit, in with a dwarf gourami and they get along pretty well.

What you need to look at is the body shape of the fish. My gourami is narrow, but tall (if you know what I mean) and I think this leads the frog to believe that he can't fit him in his mouth. I've never seen my frog go after my gourami. Avoid fish with log, flowing fins as well. The frog will grab them and start cramming. 8O
 
ACFs will go after fish that cant fend for themselves, even when i had a divider on the tank, my ACF would throw himself against it, trying to catch one. but now i have a young male kenyi cichlid who is staying with him until i get him a new home, they are relatively the same size, and the frog has made no attempt to eat him.

ACFs really should have warm water, though they can live awhile without it, its not right
 
hc8719 said:
ACFs really should have warm water, though they can live awhile without it, its not right

See now, after doing a bit of research again here i'm getting conflicted responses about that one. Most sites say a temp range of about 68-75 degrees, which is slightly warmer then room temperature (depending on what you keep your house at). But alot of sites and things don't even recoment a heater for a frog.

When i started with my frog he grew up in his own 10g tank, with a heater (my house was really cold) and i kept his water at about 70-75+ degrees, like you would for a normal "tropical" fish like barbs or something. But after reading some things, and hearing how people like to keep them with goldfish, i put him in with my goldfish in the larger 15g tank. The problem here is 2 fold, i kept the goldfish at around 65-70 if not a bit lower(which is a little high for the goldfish) and my room in my house now has a radiator in it..while the rest of the house only has 2, so it tends to get quite warm in there, so i don't even have the heater on their tank plugged in.

If they are really supposed to be kept in that warm of water, shouldn't every site include a heater and a higher temperature? My relatively extensive (but not to a degree level yet) knowledge of the area they come from and sub-tropical biology, suggests that he dosen't need water that warm. While it is true that they live in sub-saharan africa, they don't live in rainforest or something, they are savanah dwelers, and have been known to do quite well in the wild in the southern united states and apparently are quite a pest in california and arizonia. Goldfish are related to carp, while they do live in colder climates to the north, the potential climate zone for them would seem to me to overlap quite a bit.

I've seen nothing yet to convince me that 65-70 isn't an ok temp for my AFC, but if you have a link or some research about it, it isn't impossible to change my mind. That AFC don't need "tropical" water settings is a Falsifable belief for me :p
 
ADFs do much better in cold water. Goldfish, however, need at least 10g per 3" fish to thrive long.
 
DepotFish said:
ADFs do much better in cold water.

what do you mean better? have you ever had one?

while they can survive a wide range of temperatures, they should have warmer water for the long run
 
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