[36 of 37 customers found this review helpful]

FROG-O-SPHERE - DROP SHIP Review

Cool Idea, Frog Deathtrap

"I saw this at Brookstone one day while shopping with a friend. I'd always liked frogs and thought the self-contained ecosystem idea was really neat, so I picked it out as my birthday gift. This was on July 1st. Just a few weeks later, the snail died. Ok, no problem, just need to get another one, it's free at this point anyway. So a week later two arrived in the mail, and they were both deposited into the tank. Within a few days, the smaller of the snails was dead, and another few weeks, the larger snail also died. I had been following the instructions exactly: Two pellets per frog twice a week, etc etc. During the phone call to get another replacement snail, I was told the species of the animals -- Nerite Snail, and African Dwarf Frogs. [...] Since I had the species names, I did a little research on google, and ignoring the PETA sites, I quickly became appalled at the living conditions for these frogs. First off, they need at least a gallon of water per frog, and they're living in roughly a pint of it. They are very timid animals, and in the container they don't really have anywhere to hide, so they are unnecessarily stressed almost constantly. They need to be fed closer to every other day, rather than twice a week; the given regiment keeps them on the verge of starving their entire shortened life. According to the booklet that came with it, the frogs are expected to live 4-5 years. According to everywhere else I've read, their life expectancy usually ranges 5-10 years, with some as old as 18. Upon discovery of this, I was disgusted. That night, I cleaned out an old 2-gallon fish tank, cleaned up some older gravel, and swiped a small coffee mug from the kitchen for the little froggies to hide in. I didn't have enough spring water, so I used some Aqua Safe to remove the chlorine in the water and let it sit for a bit. Once I put the frogs in, they seemed to adjust to their new environment pretty quickly. Within minutes, they were obviously hungry, digging around the gravel to find food. I now feed them every other day, and though the pellets will work, I went ahead and bought some nicer foods, including frozen bloodworms -- they go CRAZY over these, it's so funny to watch them enjoying . I included the bamboo plant and "Living Gravel", and also bought some other live plants to go in there, as well as a very small filter. I am hoping to not need the filter, as I'd like to keep it a mostly self-sustaining ecosystem, but I will have to see once I get a few more snails to compensate for the larger tank and more waste from the frogs due to more food. A number of Frog-o-Sphere owners have stumbled across this blog and are exchanging stories of the adventures of their frogs and snails.[@]Anyway, to wrap up: This was a really, really cool idea, but unfortunately, the designers stopped thinking about the animals' well-being in favor of profits and advertisement campaign (notice all the 2s? Oversimplified for the sake of advertisement). If this was on a slightly larger scale (at least a gallon and a half of water, more snails/plants), then I could recommend this to a friend. Otherwise, I'd recommend people buy the components separately to make sure their animals receive proper care and live their full lifespan enjoyably; not just survive for a few years."