My red eye treefrog eggs

[fluxlizard]

What will you do with a bunch of cool frogs?

We will keep several to raise up for ourselves and sell the rest when the weather cools down for shipping at the end of the summer/early fall.

edit- whoops- just turned a page with this post. If you missed the post just before this one- go back- there are pics of the transformed froglets today!

 

[draetish]

Scott they are adorable and so vibrant. Your kids must think you're the best dad in the world sharing your animal knowledge with them. I'm dreaming up my enclosure to build for them. If I want to keep 4 or so in the same enclosure, how big would it have to be? What if the siblings mate or can you have all males in one viv? Can you tell the males from the females?

 

[fluxlizard]

Hi Donna!

I think a nice size for 4 adults would be 2 or 3 feet long x 18" to 2' wide x 30" high if you are building something. Minimally a 29 gallon aquarium would be fine for 4, which is much smaller- but I think they will use these larger dimensions if you build something for them to use. They are fairly active at night, and they are very beautiful when climbing along branches and vines and things like that, and the larger dimensions give you space to set things up for them to do that.

Also, keep in mind that they will be much smaller than adults when I start shipping them. You may want something temporary until they grow. We are raising them in groups in 22 gallon reptariums (14.5" x 14.5" x 25" high).

You can have all males in 1 vivarium. We have seen the males scuffling a little- one tries to grab another and the one about to be grabbed will kick him to keep him away. And we have seen them do the shakey booty territorial dance thing the videos I linked to earlier in this thread show. But we have only seen the dance and the scuffling and kicking when we had them in the rain chamber and they were worked up for breeding. The rest of the time they have gotten along peacefully. And all the males look great- none look like they are suffering from stress being with the other males or from the scuffles when they were going on. I think frogs must be much more tolerant of each other than lizards in similar situations. I've never read anything that says to keep males away from each other or that they will suffer from a bully. I think only when breeding do they get pushy.

I'm not sure about inbreeding in amphibians- sorry. I *think* it is a pretty common practice among frog breeders and that frogs are more tolerant of it maybe than other herps, but I don't remember why I think that way- maybe from reading what people have posted on dart frog boards... I could be completely wrong on this one.

Either way- I don't think you will have breeding unless you first cycle them by cooling them some during the winter and then put them in a rain chamber for several days in the spring when it is warmer and rainy outside so you have the right barometric pressure for the frogs- I don't think they will breed accidentally unless you set things up so it will happen by doing those things. I think in the regular vivarium setup without hours under a rain system and a large pool of water under some large leafy plant you would never see breeding.

I won't able to sex them at time of sale. I think only adults are sexable, and unless they are in breeding condition or have been in breeding condition sexing might be a little tricky because other than breeding condition, sexing is kind of determined by size and build of the frog. Fully grown females are fatter and larger than the males. But individuals the size of adult males could always be immature females with more growth ahead of them.

In breeding condition- males have special dark pads on their thumbs, and loose skin on their throats from calling. The loose skin is often visible outside of breeding so that is a clue along with size. In our case we missexed one we thought was a female when we purchased him. He ended up being an unusually large, fat male, and we only learned it when he started calling after being cycled and placed in the rain chamber.

 

[Rickky]

Cool lookin pics...

 

[Miss Lily]

Woah! They look like adults now! Hehe! How fascinating - they are very pretty froggies!

 

[ijmccollum]

Dude, they look GREAT!