Dart Frog Tadpole

I thought that I'd plonk up a photo (not the best by any standard) of a dart frog tadpole.




Ranitomeya ventrimaculata about 5 to 6 months after hatching (a rather long development), but once the tail starts to shorten the development to full frog is very rapid. For this one, about 3 days later this baby was a frog.

Total length is less than 10 mm, and is much smaller when it fisr becomes a frog.

OK. So not a fish, but a freshwater aquatic animal at this stage of development.

ian

love dart frogs thanks for shareing

Ah, well done Ian, I'd love to do that in Canada, I have always been run ragged here, if not being self employed and running everywhere and would not be able to invest the time needed to achieve your success, maybe later, Gorgeous pic btw

Kev.

Amazing as always Ian,
I'm still very interested in entering the world of Dendrobates
although time is my biggest bane at the moment.
Could you give me a small list of essentials (lo tech)
that I would need to keep some leucs.
start to finish
Smaller the better as space too is of a premium.

Nice pic BTW
Regards
C

Cheers.

This is the species that I'm doing most of my focus on breeding behaviour in dart frogs.

There are number of key problems with this (and many other) dart frogs.

They tend to be more prone to a condition that is very similar (genetically and biomolecular-wise) to human spina-bifida than many other dart frogs...spindle leg.
Often the source goes back to the parents....eg lack of UV light and lack of certain foods in the parents diet; there is also a case for the quality of food that tadpoles have.
I tend to feed a heavy spirulina diet to tadpoles, and parents have their food fed on spirulina.

But, the jury is not quite in concert on the definitive cause of spindle leg.....lots of anecdotal or empirical rssults, but I don't accept them as 'causes'.

In the picture, there is a fresh hatch micro-cricket......whilst the tadpoles will nibble away the carcas of it, it is way way too large for a froglet to eat (and is actually the upper limit of what size food should be fed to the adults).

These are actually great little creatures....my original breeding stock were not cheap, but you get a lot of frog (albeit very small species of frog) for your money. Very active and have no fear of the keeper (or of anything much really).

Are you in Canada, Kev?

@Puddlefish.....no problem to give you minimum basic for leucs. They don't take too much time either (and much less than killies to boot !). Good choice of frog in leucomeles....even better value for money than the ones pictured above.

Hi Ian,

Please include me in your Info, I'm not in Canada just yet, toward the end of December.



Kev.

Great photo and info Ian.
I always kept frogs when i was a kid. I even dug a special pond for them at one point.
Although my parents weren't to happy to come home to a hole in the garden. I even got the local coal man to take away the bags of soil so the hole couldn't be filled back in.

@Platy.....my mother had kittens every year when I would bring the frog-spawn home and hatch the frogs in open top biscuit tins (but....there were no restrictions in the those days. Can't do that anymore).

I'll do a quikie overview of the main points to consider for keeping dart frogs.
In a nutshell, they can be easy enough to keep, but also easy enough to kill if the main points are not heeded (death can be very rapid if not given what they need....but given them what they need is not difficult at all).

ian

Ah now some things are starting to fit into place Darren.

Kev.

platty252 wrote:

Great photo and info Ian.
I always kept frogs when i was a kid. I even dug a special pond for them at one point.
Although my parents weren't to happy to come home to a hole in the garden. I even got the local coal man to take away the bags of soil so the hole couldn't be filled back in.

I remember those days. There's still a relict population of frogs in that part of Walkinstown! surviving in gardens & long grass and spawning in the occasional fishless pond, which are a bit more fashionable these days.

(I dont think our poshest neighbour, Mrs Jones, was ever the same again after shredding one of your frogs with her lawnmower!)

@Puddlefih and Kev....

here you go...

www.irishfishkeepers.com/cms/component/o...,517/id,83778/#83778

no pictures there yet.

Jim wrote:

platty252 wrote:

I remember those days. There's still a relict population of frogs in that part of Walkinstown! surviving in gardens & long grass and spawning in the occasional fishless pond, which are a bit more fashionable these days.

(I dont think our poshest neighbour, Mrs Jones, was ever the same again after shredding one of your frogs with her lawnmower!)

Only last week my brother caught one in the front garden. I would say there are some in the back of your family home.
There are probably even monkeys in those trees:laugh:
I used to collect the frog spawn in kimmage manor. Unfortunately that is all houses now.