My Long-Awaited Frog Site is Now Live

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
Gone West
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
Messages
13,157
Location
Upstate New York
Display Name
Geek on the Hill
Actually, it's been live for about two weeks for testing, but now it's officially live.

https://www.myfroggycam.com

Just another way to monetize a hobby and make my pets earn their keep. I find that reptiles and amphibians are much easier to deal with than human employees.

Rich
 
Cool. How much data will that live camera be using each month?
 
Matthew K said:
Cool. How much data will that live camera be using each month?
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Too soon to say for sure. It depends on traffic.

The feed only starts when requested, and it's distributed by Apache once it gets to the server so there's never more than one stream coming from my office. There's also server-side failover caching, so as long as the server is online, visitors will see frogs. That comes in handy for things like cleaning the tank as well as Internet outages.

My turtle site gets about 1,000 unique visitors / day, and it's never pulled more than ~ 200 GB / month on the upstream feed. I don't know how popular frogs are compared to turtles.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Too soon to say for sure. It depends on traffic.

The feed only starts when requested, and it's distributed by Apache once it gets to the server so there's never more than one stream coming from my office. There's also server-side failover caching, so as long as the server is online, visitors will see frogs. That comes in handy for things like cleaning the tank as well as Internet outages.

My turtle site gets about 1,000 unique visitors / day, and it's never pulled more than ~ 200 GB / month on the upstream feed. I don't know how popular frogs are compared to turtles.

Rich
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Oh wow that's pretty cool that your only up-streaming when requested, that definitely saves data.
 
we had one in a fish tank till recently...small 3.0 gallon table top with a couple of tetras...it was given to us at a relative young age and lasted what seemed like three years...just wondering how long they live on average...it was cool and I wish I had put a friend or two with it but never could seem to figure out if that was a good Idea...It responded to human contact and feeding...
 
You know, it's true. Frog legs taste like chicken. I really like frog legs. No offense Rich. :popcorn: :biggrin:
 
Warlock said:
we had one in a fish tank till recently...small 3.0 gallon table top with a couple of tetras...it was given to us at a relative young age and lasted what seemed like three years...just wondering how long they live on average...it was cool and I wish I had put a friend or two with it but never could seem to figure out if that was a good Idea...It responded to human contact and feeding...
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Three to five years is about average in captivity, assuming proper care, which is unusual. Too many people don't understand the difference between fish and amphibians, not to mention the near-unique nature of the ADF, which is a fully-aquatic amphibian. Although adults have lungs and breathe air, they can't survive out of the water for more than 15 or 20 minutes.

The other common causes of premature death are overfeeding (especially among inexperienced aquarists); starvation (when they're kept with a large population of fish who eat all the food before any of it settles to the bottom); consumption by larger animals (I knew one idiot who thought putting them in a turtle tank would be a good idea); drowning when people put them in tanks that are too tall for them to come up to breathe; and ammonia and nitrite poisoning from overcrowding and/or improperly-prepared or poorly-maintained habitats.

I blame most of these problems on pet shop salespeople, who usually know almost nothing about amphibians and care even less. They don't provide proper care information, so the frogs don't get proper care. That's the other reason I wrote the site. African dwarf frogs are actually very amusing and endearing pets who are very easy to care for and very relaxing to watch. But their care requirements, few and simple as they may be, are absolute.

In terms of company, ADFs are not social animals in the strict sense, but they're gregarious animals who do best with others of their own kind. I would never keep fewer than three, personally. The tank in the feed has eight. They can be kept with peaceful fish, but it complicates feeding.

Rich
 
It looks dark there. I guess it's night time. Froggies are asleep.
 
I see them moving around in the dark. They have insomnia.
 
They're actually weakly nocturnal in nature. In captivity, they take note of and adapt to the keeper's schedule. They're very accommodating that way.

two-frogs-hiding-under-marimo-ball.jpg


They're actually excellent pets if they're cared for properly, which is simple to do. They're easier to care for than fish or terrestrial reptiles or amphibians, and they bond with the keeper more so than fish do. Their eye placement and facial structure also make it seem like they're always looking at whomever is looking at them, which is psychologically engaging.

Rich
 
The frog site chalked up its first sale today. It was a small item that will only make me about $0.34 commission, but it was a product I promoted, so it means the site's reaching its target audience.

The only problem is that someone told the frogs, and now they're talking union.

frogs-group.jpg


Rich
 
What dictates the choice of the blue light for the tank?
 
islandboy said:
What dictates the choice of the blue light for the tank?
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It's a night viewing light for humans (and the camera) to see inside the tank at night. Red would work as well, but red tends to be overpowering on a video. The frogs could do without either one. They don't need a night light.

The day / night light change happens at 8:00 and 20:00 EST.

Rich
 
As a long-time fish keeper (currently with a 55-gal African Cichlid tank), this fascinates me - and I mean both the frogs themselves and the video setup.

They look fun. Just from watching the video for a few minutes, it seems like some of them are in constant motion - up to the top and back down, over and over, while some are content to take a breath, then lay on the bottom for a while before coming back up. Interesting animals!

I did place a GoPro in the tank with my fish once, it was pretty fun to watch their reactions.

Thanks for posting!
 
Cool site ... learned something new today.

I figure keeping up with Amazon is part of the fun, as they never 404. Your SunSun filter is OOS with no reorder date. Maybe a carefully crafted search results link will prevent this issue.
 
RussR said:
As a long-time fish keeper (currently with a 55-gal African Cichlid tank), this fascinates me - and I mean both the frogs themselves and the video setup.

They look fun. Just from watching the video for a few minutes, it seems like some of them are in constant motion - up to the top and back down, over and over, while some are content to take a breath, then lay on the bottom for a while before coming back up. Interesting animals!

I did place a GoPro in the tank with my fish once, it was pretty fun to watch their reactions.

Thanks for posting!
Click to expand...

Thanks.

They also have different personalities. In this video, the one glass-surfing across the front of the tank starting about 1:15 in is begging for a meal. He's figured out that I'm the source of the food, so he follows me back and forth as I walk through the office, endlessly begging for a snack. Yesterday was an off-feeding day, so he was that much more determined to get my attention.


Some other differences are that some of the frogs love the bubbles while the others ignore them, and some of them love the filter return and hang out there all day. The interesting thing about those observations is that many frog keepers shun aeration and filtration because they believe that the noise from the bubbles and the flow from the filter bother the frogs. I've come to the conclusion that it's actually the hum from the pump and filter motors that they can't deal with. As long as those sounds are effectively isolated, the bubbles and filter whoosh don't seem to bother them in the least.

Rich
 
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masloki said:
Cool site ... learned something new today.

I figure keeping up with Amazon is part of the fun, as they never 404. Your SunSun filter is OOS with no reorder date. Maybe a carefully crafted search results link will prevent this issue.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I noticed that. The problem is that there are very few canister filters suitable for ADFs. Most of them deliver way too much flow.

Besides, on the video link, that's the filter actually being used on the tank, so I pretty much have to leave it there in the text for the sake of honesty. I'll remove the link and add a note that it's unavailable if they don't restock it, and recommend one of the Zoo Med Nanos as an alternate. (They're actually better-made filters than that particular SunSun model, anyway.)

Thanks.

Rich
 
Well, I just showed your site to my 9-year old daughter, and then we went through looking at all the pictures you have up. She loves the frogs. We were both fascinated watching the live video. Now she is trying to talk me into setting up another tank so we can have some.

We will see - I certainly think it would be great.

Thanks again.
 
RussR said:
Well, I just showed your site to my 9-year old daughter, and then we went through looking at all the pictures you have up. She loves the frogs. We were both fascinated watching the live video. Now she is trying to talk me into setting up another tank so we can have some.

We will see - I certainly think it would be great.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Thank you. That actually makes it worth all the work, even if the site never earns more than the $0.34 that it already has. :)

They're easy and fun. I hope you do set up a tank. As an experienced aquarist, you won't have any problems. All things considered, they're much easier than fish.

Be careful of the filter intake. If there's any chance of an arm or leg getting stuck, use a prefilter sponge or a fry filter over it.

Rich
 
Your setup is much better suited to online display than mine...I have a small population of frogs that live in my (ahem) toilet tank. They enter through an overflow pipe that traverses the wall. They leave at night to sing to their girlfriends.

RJM62 said:
two-frogs-hiding-under-marimo-ball.jpg


They're actually excellent pets if they're cared for properly, which is simple to do. They're easier to care for than fish or terrestrial reptiles or amphibians, and they bond with the keeper more so than fish do. Their eye placement and facial structure also make it seem like they're always looking at whomever is looking at them, which is psychologically engaging.

Rich
Click to expand...
 
Here are the visitor stats for the first year:

frogstats-2017.jpg


Not horrible. They're paying for their keep and then some.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Here are the visitor stats for the first year:

frogstats-2017.jpg


Not horrible. They're paying for their keep and then some.

Rich
Click to expand...
How many of those hits are POA members that keep coming back to the site? :D
 
Xenopus tropicalis. They're actually an up and coming model system for Developmental biologists. A great deal of what we know about developmental biology and the cell cycle was learned from tropicalis' big brother Xenopus laevis, the African clawed frog. laevis has the advantage of being temperate, so they do fine at room temperature. They have gigantic eggs that can be manipulated to do slashing burn developmental biology or biochemistry. But they suck at genetics, with long life cycles and a tetraploid genome.

tropicalis is smaller, and the eggs are smaller, but still big enough to be allow manipulation and microinjection. But they're true diploids, with a smaller genome and shorter life cycle. That means you can do genetics, which is sort of having you cake and eating it too. I wish it had come along in time for me to jump into.
 
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