What Amphibian Keepers Actually Ask: 1,165 Real Questions, Analysed

By The Bognook Team · written & researched by amphibian keepers🔍 Keeper-reviewed for accuracy

Most “what do beginners need to know?” advice is guesswork. So we did something different: we read what amphibian keepers actually say — thousands of posts and comments — and pulled out every real question to see what people genuinely worry about. Here’s the data.

The 30-second version: Across 377 care questions from the amphibian communities, feeding is the single most-asked topic, followed by breeding, eggs & morphing and health / “is my animal sick?”. Nearly every question comes down to one thing: “am I doing this right?” — anxiety from people who care, not carelessness.

How we did this

We’re a care site, so we wanted the roadmap to come from real keepers, not from us:

  1. We collected over 5,600 unique posts and comments from amphibian-keeping communities — Reddit’s r/axolotls and r/frogs, keeper forums and Facebook groups, and search autocomplete.
  2. We filtered them to the 1,165 that were actually questions (they asked something).
  3. We kept the 377 that were about care/husbandry and clustered them by topic.

→ For the full, citable method — exact sources, sample sizes, and honest limits — see How we analysed amphibian keeper questions.

The amphibian-keeping communities we drew from are big — r/frogs (~200k), r/axolotls (~153k), r/toads (~30k), r/PacmanFrog (~18k), r/DartFrog (~14k) and r/salamanders (~9k) total well over 400,000 members (2025 figures). This is a demand signal — what people ask — never our source for what’s true. The facts in our guides are checked against authorities; the questions come from the community.

What keepers actually ask about most

Ranked by share of care questions (a question can touch more than one topic):

Topic Share of care questions
🍽️ Feeding (how much, how often, “why won’t it eat?”) 36%
🥚 Breeding, eggs & morphing 23%
🎨 Morphs & species ID (“what kind is this?”) 11%
🩺 Health — “is my animal sick?” 10%
✋ Handling & safety (can I hold it? is it toxic?) 9%
💧 Water quality & cycling 6%
🛒 Buying, cost & where to get one 6%
🏠 Substrate & impaction 5%
🌡️ Temperature & cooling 4%
🔄 Behaviour — “is this normal?” 4%
📦 Tank size & setup 3%
👥 Tank mates / cohabitation 3%

The big picture: it’s all “am I doing this right?”

The striking thing isn’t any single topic — it’s the emotion underneath. Whether it’s “how often should I feed?”, “is this normal?”, or “is my axolotl sick?”, the vast majority of questions come from a keeper who cares and is worried about getting it wrong. Almost nobody is asking how to cut corners.

That’s the whole reason Bognook exists: honest, judgment-free answers for people who love their animal and just want to do right by it. The data says that’s most keepers.

What’s different about axolotl keepers

A few topics are distinctly axolotl-flavoured: colour morphs (“what morph is mine?”), “is my axolotl morphing?”, and cooling questions (chillers, summer heat) come up far more in the axolotl world than elsewhere — which is exactly why axolotls get their own morph identifier and a lot of cold-water guidance. Feeding, health and “is this normal?” are universal across every amphibian community.

→ And how does amphibian-keeping compare to the reptile world? We put both datasets side by side: Amphibian vs Reptile Keepers — what 765 questions reveal.

We built the site around these questions

Every top topic above has a direct answer here — because we built the library from this demand:

Or just browse the full Q&A hub, which is an index of these real questions.

→ We also turned this data into a ranked guide: the most common amphibian-keeping mistakes, ordered by how often keepers ask about them.

Honest limits of this analysis

We believe in showing our working, including the caveats:

  • The corpus centres on axolotls and frogs (the biggest communities), so salamanders, newts and toads are under-represented — their keepers likely ask similar husbandry questions in different proportions.
  • Keyword clustering is approximate: a question can land in more than one topic, and some get missed. Treat the percentages as directional, not precise.
  • Community subscriber counts are ~2025 floors (the current numbers are equal or higher).
  • This is a snapshot of public questions; quieter keepers who never post are, by definition, not counted.

💚 The best care sites are built from real questions, not assumptions. If yours isn’t on our list yet, ask us — the next guide we write is the one you need.

Analysis and write-up by The Bognook Team. This is a demand-signal study of what keepers ask — not veterinary or care advice. For a sick animal, see an exotics vet.

Common questions

What do amphibian keepers ask about most?

In our analysis of 377 care questions from the amphibian communities, feeding was the single biggest topic (about 36% of care questions), followed by breeding/eggs/morphing (23%), morph and species ID (11%), and health/'is my animal sick?' (10%). Most questions boil down to one anxiety: 'am I doing this right?'

How did you work out what amphibian keepers ask?

We collected over 5,600 unique posts and comments from amphibian-keeping communities (Reddit's r/axolotls and r/frogs, keeper forums and Facebook groups, plus search autocomplete), filtered them to the 1,165 that were actually questions, and clustered the 377 care/husbandry ones by topic using keyword matching. It's a demand signal — what people ask — not a source of care facts.

What worries new amphibian keepers the most?

Getting the basics right — especially feeding (how much, how often, why won't it eat?) and health ('is this normal or is my animal sick?'). Underneath almost every question is a keeper who cares and is anxious about making a mistake, which is exactly who honest, judgment-free care information is for.

Do axolotl keepers ask different questions than frog keepers?

Some topics are axolotl-specific — colour morphs, 'is my axolotl morphing?', and cold-water/cooling questions come up far more for axolotls. Feeding, health and 'is this normal?' are shared across every amphibian community.

Where can I get these questions answered?

Our Q&A hub answers the most-asked questions directly, and each big topic has a full guide — feeding, health triage, breeding, cycling, substrate and more. The whole site is built around the real questions in this analysis.

📚 Keep reading