Dart Frogs and things (a good few pics)

Well, all thanks to Petemax.....inspired me to throw up a few pictures of some of my amphibious creatures.

So, today I be mainly posting pictures of some of my Poison Dart Frogs.

I know a few people on here keep PDFs or are interested in them.





Dendrobates tinctorius azureus




Not a frog....but an orchid for a PDF viv (miniature)




Dendrobates tinctorius (not a good photo as shot through perspex)




Dendrobate auratus



Ranitomeya (amazonica) ventrimaculata



Ranitomeya (amazonica) ventrimaculata male with 2 baby tadpoles on his back


8 month old Ranitomeya (amazonica) ventrimaculata frog......showing how small this frog is.
The creature on its head is newly hatched micro (pin-head) brown cricket, the creature on its left front leg is a (almost microscopic) sprintail.




Ranitomeya vanzolini

(ideas for a cracked old fish tank perhaps)
ian

they look great sorry if this stupid question rthey dangerous to handle(poison)

Hi Ian,
these are stunning little creatures!thanks for sharing!
Never kept any PDFs that could be a next project:cheer:
Dimitri

Very very cool! Thanks for sharing man.

Jay

WOW!
Any chance of a wee few words about their keeping?Just the basics of how you do it.

eire1978 wrote:

they look great sorry if this stupid question rthey dangerous to handle(poison)

Thanks.

The question is not a stupid one at all. It is one that many people ask.

The majority of poison dart frogs obtain their skin alkaloid toxins from toxins in the food that they eat.
It maybe that the insects and mites they eat obtain the toxins from a dietary source themselves.

In captivity, the frogs do not get the diet they have in the wilds, and so there is no skin toxins present.
Wild caught specimens will lose their toxins once they stop receiving the wild diet.

There are a few PDFs that, at present, may produce their own alkaloid toxins. But that 'may' is on the basis that a dietary source has not be located for the toxins.

Some PDFs (notably Oophage pumillio) do convert the dietary alkaloids into more toxic forms...but that is rare.

SO: to answer the question......when handling, there is more danger of damaging the frog due to our skin secretions; but you may not know if the specimen is recently wild caught or not if you don't know the history.
Not all PDF toxins is enough to kill a man, but some are fatally potent.

All of my frogs are either long-term captive bred, or have been in captivity long enough to not warrant any concern.

@ Jay and Dimitri...thanks. Dimitri, I could easily see you as the next PDF keeper.

ian

Well thank you!I also find orchids amazing I would absolutely love to combine the two!
So,if by any chance you happen to be in Dun Laoghaire i'd definitely try and pick your brains on the subject!

wow they really are lovly

Are these susceptible to chytridiomycosis?

Kev.

@ funkychic …thanks.

..............
@scubadim wrote:

Well thank you!I also find orchids amazing I would absolutely love to combine the two!
So,if by any chance you happen to be in Dun Laoghaire i'd definitely try and pick your brains on the subject!

Dimitri…..Orchids?! I was founder and editor of Pollinia (the publication of the Irish Orchid Society), and used to lecture in orchid science and cultivation.
SO….you’re welcome to pick my brains.

...........................

@stretnik wrote:

Are these susceptible to chytridiomycosis?

Kev.

Kev, yes. Very much so, and a big worry for keepers and conservationists and the future populations of PDFs in the wild.

This situation is rather critical. I am very concerned that we are verging on the potential for a massive extinction in the near future.

One of the points that I always stress to people keeping PDFs is cleanliness and responsible disposal of water from the tanks or with dead frogs…..strong bleach before disposing.

We also have to consider our native species of amphibian as well.

...........
@Acara……I don’t believe in CareSheets for things like PDFs, but a few basic bullet points for keeping are:

It is easy to set-up a system for PDFS, but they are also easy to kill (and very rapidly).

- Cleanliness. Don’t leave festering shallow water dishes with dirty water.
- They drown very easily….so no deep water. Males often try to kill rivals by drowning them.
- High humidity…..80 to 100% but with good air circulation.
- Dry conditions will kill them rather quickly….within hours (even quicker for the small frogs)
- Temperature….low to mid 20s. Temperatures approaching 30 C or above will kill them very quickly (within hours).
- Don’t mix species on first keeping…..they do fight.
- Don’t handle with bare hands.
- When buying the first species, go for ones that are bold, greedy and known to do well in captivity.

All of the above are quite easy to do.

The most difficult thing is making sure that you can get food small enough on a regular basis (and it does have to be small).

I could go into specifics, but that is longer story.

ian

I love PDFs but cant keep them yet, could you post some photos of the whole tank setups? Or even a run down on how to set one up? Adrian

arabu1973 wrote:

I love PDFs but cant keep them yet, could you post some photos of the whole tank setups? Or even a run down on how to set one up? Adrian

I don't have any pics of complete set-ups.....although I have some somewhere of the details of piping and false-bottoms to tanks; not much use apart from how to construct custom tanks for them.

The actual set-up can be as cheap or as pricey as you want.

The basic set-up for just keeping them is incredibly cheap. It may not be the prettiest.

Then you can go for a complete natural looking biotope in a large breeding system. That would be pricey.

I would prefer to do a complete article on this rather a simple guide as there is a potential that a reader looking at the dirt cheap set-up may get some things wrong with dire results.

I'm in the middle of doing some articles on PDFs for publication elsewhere. But most of those will be on toxicology and chemistry (as that is my interest). Most of that work will initially be published by the Herpetological Society of Ireland.

The main points about keeping PDFs is to follow the bulleted points that I made in the last post.
I didn't give details on how to do that as that would lengthen the post.

A simple set-up, however, for just keeping them alive may only require a smallish perspex fish tank with a good lid (to stop escapes and maintain high humidity). Then you have to work on giving them the other requirements. You'd still need a heat source and a thermostat.
That type of system would require an increased amount of checking and maintenance though.

A proper breeding biotope for some PDFs would require a large vivaria (2 x 2 x 2 foot minimum) for a pair or trio, some plants, rocks, decor, with a false bottom, 24 hours external foggers (not the cheap 50 euro foggers eithers), UVA and UVB lighting that doesn't generate too much heat, and a series of fans near the bottom of the viv to circulate the air. The viv would really be custome built or a modified glass reptile viv.

Whichever way, PDFs are not cheap. The cheapest you'll probably get in Ireland is 50 to 60 odd euro.
I get offered some real bargains from Holland at......and these are called 'Bargains' from the breeders...at 600 or 800 euro for a 1 cm long froglet.!!!

Prices are coming down though. The prices here on the ventrimaculatus (see pictures on first post) when I got mine were 185 euro each. These have come down in price an awful lot.

But....maybe I will do an article on setting-up a PDF tank. As I said, it can be easy and cheap or difficult and pricey.

There was one bit in reply to Acara's post that I didn't emphasise:

Dart Frogs need UVB and UVA light. if you want them to live long.

However, it is not always safe or convenient to place a UVB lamp into a viv.
Hence, an alternative that works well is to carefully (CAREFULLY) dust the food with a calcium source every feed, and to dust with a calcium/vitamin D source (eg nutrabol) every 2 or 3 feedings. I also fnd that a liquid calcium/vitamin D3 source in their shallow water bowl is good.

ian

Very interesting.Thanks for sharing.Regards,Tim

I only got my first PDF exactly 1 year ago yesterday as a birthday present, it was Dentrobates auratus green and black. I had it for five or 6 months. Unfortunately I believe he died of starvation as I moved him into what I suppose was too big of a viv on his own, so he couldn't catch his food as it had too many places to escape and hide. Here are a few pics of his viv...




Here is a vacant viv that I have that is actually designed and made purely for poison dart frogs, although I am "in-between" frogs at the minute. It is sealed all round to keep in moisture and food (very small gauge mesh), while allowing good circulation.


Note on this picture, what is called a "false floor", this feature is very handy. It causes water, and the dirty stuff to trickle down and be neutralised by the zeo-lite in the channel. Germs can be lethal to poison dart frogs, so can chlorinated water...


I have learned pretty much all I know through talking to Ian, Gavin, Ben in Reptile Haven and Mark in Cold Heart Lisburn, and some other folks and reading a few books and online articles. You will get a hell of a lot of conflicting advice at the start! It is quite difficult to keep them alive (I've knocked off four in a year! )
One thing is for sure that if you over-complicate matters as a beginner you will probably end up killing them also. I would completely agree with Ian that it is very difficult to get suitable food for these tiny-mouthed guys, even in specialist shops. It's not that the food is hard to get, it is that there are so few people buying it that the food usually dies on the shelves so the shops don't order it in.
If you have any difficult questions though ask Ian, not me!

Moral of the story... If you are the sort of person that sits for hours staring at the behaviour of your fish, you will really appreciate Poison Dart Frogs!

Great Post wolfsberg, and thanks for adding pictures where I didn't have any at hand.

You had a good set-up there.

Pity to hear about the D. auratus.

Expanding on that, D.auratus are one of the easier PDFs, but there is one slight problem as opposed to many other PDFs: they are quite shy and tend to hide just a bit too much. The hiding and timid nature would place them, in my classification, as an intermediate frog to keep. Other than that, they are a superb species: and difficult to catch that mint-green on photos.

For anyone wanting to start keeping PDFs, if I were pushed to recommend a starter species (and I don't really like doing such things), then I'd recommend either
Dendrobates leucomeles (bumblee bee PDFs...and I haven't put a picture of mine up); or a type of Dendrobates tinctorius (there are loads of varieties of these).
on the basis of ease of keeping, availabilty and low(ish) cost.

They are very bold greedy species and give plenty of animal for the money, and larger adults will take size 1 crickets quite easily (which means less of a problem obtaining food).

There are some other good starter ones, but prices can be a bit silly at times.

Also, if anyone plans on getting some PDFs then set-up the viv weeks or months in advance. Reasons why?

ian

well done. very interesting thread and lovely pictures.

I would have gone for tincs or leucs but it was auratus that seemed to present themselves to me each time... you can't really be too choosy when selecting PDFs, you kind of take what you can get!
I'll start-up my little tank again one of these days, I need a new fogger and UV system first though, need to kickstart things with a couple of springtails and woodlice first.





I'll probably be in the market for a trio in a few weeks Ian if you'll have anything for sale! I'd prefer tincs really but I'd take anything.

By the way Ian, can you reccommend a nice plant stock list for my little tank and where to buy them (shops any where in Ireland, not on Internet). The tank is 12 inch X 12 X12.

Stunning little creatures and great photos, lots of info too, thanks for posting.

Interesting about their toxicity, I assumed they would always be toxic, good to know with most of them it depends on their diet.



Daragh

Fascinating stuff,and thanks for taking the time to reply.

Wolfsberg....and who could not resist the costa rica auratus?

We don't have much of choice in ireland though.

Plants....without doing an extended post here, have a look at the Orchid Fayre in April at Glasnevin.
Not all orchids are suitable, but there are many good warm-growing Pleurothalids that will work.
Very few orchids that you normally get in Ireland would be suitable in a smallish system.

I'll do a fuller plant list another day (busy at moment).

Darragh, the toxicology of these is fascinating. Some of the compounds have great medical potential. Not all of the PDFs are as toxic as myth would have it.....but some are beyond the myth toxic.

Cheers Ian,
Gill has already said that she'll come along so I'll be at the orchid fayre for sure!
Haven't been in the gardens for years!

I haven't decide if I will help out on the IOS stand this year or not (always did both full days in the early years of this event). So no defo date set for me to be around.

The restaurant isn't bad either for a bit of nosh.

I'll probably be at the Friday night launch (members only though).

I know this post is two months old but I was wonderin if anybody out there was breeding pdf`s,azureus in particular as I would like to buy a few soon.Have a false bottom viv,fully planted and ready to go,just need the frogs.

Hi guys, i'm thinking of starting a smallish dart frog setup and was wondering if there is any shop in ireland you guys recommend. I would also like to know if there are any dart frog forum you would recommend. I know nothing about dart frog and how to look after them.