Tad development

I've managed to spend a day at home today and have have realized that we have a fair bit going on at the moment. The corn snakes have all hatched and we have 19 of them, yes 19 out of 18 eggs (still smiling about that). The corns have laid again and we have a further 10 eggs in the incubator. The tadpoles are starting to come through thick and fast and we currently have 2 tinctorius powder blues with all four legs due out of the water any day now, an Ole marie tad just popping his front legs now,8 other Ole marie tads in various stages of development  around 12 Leucomelas tadpoles again in varying stages of development  some azureiventris eggs about to hatch and around 9-10 of them looking really good so far and 3 Mysteriosus tadpoles that were given to us by a friend. as well as all this we are STILL waiting on the chameleon eggs to start hatching (any day now).

Anyway as most of you know I have been battling with tadpoles developing SLS for a long time. SLS is a malformation while metamorphosis occurs. Frogs that develop seemingly normally and have fully formed hind legs and a well formed body can eventually morph with very thin malformed front legs or no fronts legs at all.

There are no definite theories on what can cause SLS and no concrete cure. People I have spoken to about the issue have said that amongst other things SLS can occur when:

• Tadpoles or parent frogs are not exposed to sufficient UVB light
• The tadpoles are raised in water of an inappropriate temperature
• Genetic defects caused by bad parent blood lines or by inbreeding
• The water being used is of the wrong pH value
• The tadpoles are fed an inappropriate diet
• Supplementation of the parent frog 

The list goes on and on. Here are a few pictures of past cases we have had of frogs with SLS:

This is a pair of auratus. 

This is a Tinc. Cobalt that was doing very well as a tadpole and the muck in his rearing container impaired the view of his legs and this was the result

Here is another cobalt tadpole that was found to have SLS when his front legs popped

All of the frogs/tadpoles were euthanised by a trained Vet in the kindest possible way.

In the past I used boiled, cooled tap water to raise my tadpoles and found that depending on species tadpoles would either die very early on from a mouth fungus or would develop nicely until the point of front legs. After much experimentation and talks with other breeders I started trying different types of water. Bottled water was working well I didn't loose any tadpoles to mouth fungus but lost many to SLS. Then someone suggested rain water collected locally. Well since using rainwater collected in a tank outside my back door I am pleased to report that things are getting much better I have only lost dubious looking probably infertile eggs. The numbers produced are a little lower but again I am always changing how things are done. The parent frogs now get a good varied diet and I dust every feeding with Repashy ICB calcium supplement. The tadpoles are kept at room temperature in plastic pots with nothing but rain water and a dry oak leaf for cover. They are fed a mixture of fish food, spirulina flake and dried bloodworm every other day. All of this has finally paid off if you remember with the very first D. Leucomelas that we had morph without SLS (he's still doing great by the way), and now I'm pleased as punch to show you the following pictures, these are the two D. Tinc. Powder Blue tadpoles we have that have come furthest along thus far and should hopefully be taking their first steps onto dry land soon:

I'll update you later when they are out and about =)

As promised some funky baby shots

Here is a shot of how the Orange Terribs look now:

By the time they have their adult colouration they should be a brilliant orange colour, cant wait to see them all big and satsuma like.

And here is the first (really bad) picture of a powder blue tadpole without SLS!!!! chuffed to friggin bits is not the actual words I used but you get the idea how hard this has all been for me.

 I also thought you'd like to see some of the corn snakes that have hatched over the last 24 hours:

Anery number 1

 Anery number 2

 Anery number 3

 Carolina number 1

 Carolina number 2

 Carolina number 3

All of these pictures have been taken within 24 hours of hatching so the colours are not as good as they will be yet. We have to wait for the first shed to really see it come through and that should be within a week to 10 days.
We had a very interesting thing happen too.... twins, below is a picture of them snuggled in the egg just after they pipped for the first time:

the really cool thing is that as far as I can make out they are two different colours. The nose on the left looks to be a Carolina and the nose on the right looks like an Anery. Cant wait to see the result.

Small update after a long wait

First off let me apologize for not posting anything for so long. My workload has increased and my free time is being swallowed rather quickly. First things first 'Skully' our Leuc baby is doing really well, he's getting bigger by the day and eating like a little piggy. As he seems to have been my first major success I decided to celebrate the occasion with a tattoo:

Also in the last few weeks I have obtained four Phyllobates Terribilis Orange, these were a bargain and have been on my wish list for a long time. They were only just ready for sale when I got them and they are yet to obtain their adult colouration. I'll post a picture of them as they are now later on and then hopefully an update on how they look when they have coloured up.

As far as the eggs go we've not seen any real action from the chameleon eggs yet but I'm pleased to tell you we currently have corn snakes hatching as I type.

Here they are pipping and the first few having a look at the world and taking their first breaths:

Cute huh?

Well on to some other frog stuff, as I went into the rep room to get pictures of the snakes hatching I heard a familiar sound I've not heard in a long time.... The male Cobalt was calling from his hiding spot. I managed to get a video but their call isn't very loud at all so you may need to turn your speakers up:

We are also getting very excited about our tadpoles now as we seem *fingers tightly crossed* to be having more success than ever before. We have some Tinctorius powder blues that are due to pop their front legs any day and they are looking really strong, we're not loosing tadpoles to mouth fungus or water quality issues  now and the frogs, especially the Leuc's are still productive. We have a shelf full of tadpole tubs now and hopefully I'll have some great news soon.

Here's hoping the next update has lots of pictures of babies!!!!

Here's 'Skully'

Well the Leucomelas tadpole from the previous post has morphed successfully and been with us for around 3 weeks now. He is quite happy in his growing out tub and has been greedily munching his way through everything we throw at him. We have decided to call him Skully, his patterning shows you why:

I'm very happy with his progress and we have a large number of tadpoles on the way to morphing and more eggs to hatch yet. Here he is the day we moved him into his grow out tub:

The grow out tubs used are about the same size as a standard shoe box and has two mesh covered vents glued into the lid. I use a substrate of orchid back and use a section of fake plant to provide cover. I have seeded these tubs with spring tails and I make sure I top up the springs every couple of days. Babies eat a lot of spring tails. For those of you who are not aware springtails are a small hexapod that is more commonly found under damp logs and stones in the garden, think all those tiny white bugs that bounce all over the place. Well great for dart frog breeders they are also very easy to breed. I use a large bucket with a secure lid for culturing springs at the moment. This bucket contains several large lumps of wood charcoal. I put around a centimetre of water at the bottom of the bucket to keep humidity up (the springs don't drown as they are too small to break the surface of the water). I add couscous about twice a week and when it goes mouldy the spring tails explode.... we end up with millions of them after just a few days and if you get it right they can be very easy to culture.

We are also just about ready for our first chameleon eggs to hatch, there are around 18-19 eggs that should be due in the first 2 weeks of September. I'm very excited but could do with a billion trillion squillion more fruit flies as they eat an awful lot for the first few days.
More to come on that in later days and I'll also post about the C.R.E.A.K.S. kidderminster breeders meet in the next couple of days.

Nearly there...

Over the past few months things have been up and down with the dart frogs, but today I have slightly better news. Here is a shot of a Leucomelas tadpole that has developed further than the others:

His front legs look good, his body shape is right and I have a feeling that this time it could be a success. The only difference I have made recently is to keep the tadpoles in rainwater. Here's hoping I can repeat this over and over. I have a Tinctorius cobalt due to pop his front legs any day now and he's looking pretty good too. I'm away at the CREAKS Kidderminster show again this coming weekend so hoping to have lots to report back.

I know its been over two months....

I know I've been a bit rubbish with the posts but I would like to say a huge thank you to those who still follow or support this blog and myself with everything I do, sometimes things can get on top of me and the last thing I need is another job on the pile. the blog sadly has been under maintained because quiet frankly I just haven't had the time, but I'm here with an update so on to the blog:

The eggs we have had have not been doing well at all.... that is to say the eggs are making it to tadpoles but the tadpoles are either failing or are morphing with SLS. Its been a real tough couple of months what with work getting busier and things going on here. I have had discussions with several people from within the community of poison dart frog keepers both in the UK and Europe and the ONLY thing we have come up with is that the tap water down here must be having a detrimental effect on the tadpoles. I have lost a lot of them this year and at one point I almost gave it all up. The tads have either never started feeding or have developed mouth fungus. The tads that have made it to morphing have morphed with SLS.

I have now changed the system for raising tads again and am hoping a simplistic approach will be better than all the new fangled stuff I've been trying. I now keep the tads individually in small amounts of rainwater, each tadpole has  it's own oak leaf which hopefully is adding beneficial tannins to the water.

Since stripping it right back to the basics I have not lost a single tadpole but at the same time the tinctorius pairs that I have have almost stopped breeding altogether. The Leucomelas are doing well and both female are laying every 2 weeks or so and the tricolors are just beginning to lay fairly large fertile clutches but its early days for them so we are still waiting on some tadpoles or transportation or both. We currently have 3 Tinc powder blue tads who are just forming their back legs, 1 Ole Marie tad who is still just a large tad, 2 Cobalt tads who have both back legs and should be popping their front legs soon and 2 clutches of Leuc eggs that I pulled recently, not to mention a clutch from the Ole Marie within the last couple of days.

In other ruraljungle news I'm sorry to report the death of our eldest female Yemen chameleon Nyx, who as you may remember I only bought at the creaks Kidderminster show this time last year. While it is sad it also leaves the way a bit clearer so that I can either get another female for the breeding project or leaves a space for my offspring to be grown on next year. I do feel however that it highlights the fact that sometimes there are risks involved when buying adult animals. Sometimes you get first class, well cared for beasties or in this case you get an old, past breeding, sub par quality specimen. Don't get me wrong I loved her as I love all my animals but I do feel I resented her for taking up food and space that could have gone on an animal that would have contributed back by now. None of this was her fault and I have reflected a lot on my decision   to buy her, I bought her for the wrong reasons but in the end was hopefully able to give her a happy life until the end. R.I.P Nyx

More eggs than you can shake a stick at

Its busy busy here at the rural jungle and Kelly and myself have been really pleased with the way things are going nowadays. We currently have 3 wild caught pairs of frogs that have started breeding along side our tio of Dendrobates Leucomelas. Our Cobalts are still going strong and we now have 9 tadpoles and around 30 eggs.
Here are the earliest eggs hatching:

And here are the eggs from their next clutch:

As you can see the tadpoles are starting to take shape.

Our Leucs have produced a really good clutch of 11 eggs:

The tinctorius Ole Marie have produced another great clutch (fingers crossed these will survive).

And more recently our Powder blues surprised us by dropping these little beauties under a coconut hut after only being with us for about a month.

So like I said more eggs than you shake a stick at but I also have a few tadpoles from the Cobalt's as well:

Some of them are developed enough to have back legs:

And others are still tiny and have only just left the comfort of their egg:

I currently keep my eggs in covered Petri dishes until the tadpole emerges naturally, I flood the dishes to provide enough water for the tadpoles for a couple of days. Once they are stronger I put them into disposable plastic cups that have 4 hour pierced in the side. I add a bit of Elodea for some cover/natural food. These cups are kept in my tadpole rearing system. This is a fairly new idea and I'm hoping the increased filtration means less work but cleaner water for the tads.
Here it is:

The water is maintained at 26° and has a filter placed at the far end. The out let for the filter is at the end with the syphon (purely there so easy to find when I need it) so water flows from end to end but is fairly gentle. There is a red bush tea bag in one of the cups at the far end and that keeps just the right amount of tea to colour the water but not pollute it. This red bush tea has natural anti fungal properties and should stop anything funky happening.
This is in its early stages but I'm hoping to see some success very soon and within a few weeks it should be full with tadpoles, the whole system can hold 33 tad's but I have a couple more of these that I can set up when I need to.

Overjoyed!!!

After sooo many years I finally have some amazing news, the wild caught cobalt's have been producing eggs constantly but the tadpoles have either been dying or morphing to frog with a condition known as SLS or spindly leg syndrome, which means they have to be put down anyway. Well after years and years of tweaking we finally have a positive result. This is Seven, our very first successful tadpole:

He will be out of the water very soon and is already using his legs to support himself. So so happy right now I think I may explode.

Vivarium update

I've had my dart tanks for a while now and while some have been planted for almost 2 years others I have only put together in the last 6 months i just thought i throw up a pictorial to show them off. So here they are:

About 8 weeks old, houses 8 Hyloxalus azureiventris

The biggest tank at just under 36 inch wide, houses a wild caught pair of tinctorius cobalts

Left side:

Right side:

About 4 weeks old, houses a wild caught pair of tinctorius powder blues

About 10 weeks, old houses 4 tinctorius azureus

About 14 weeks old, houses 3 Leucomelas

About 6 weeks old,  houses 2 tinctorius citronella

One of the oldest tanks at around 12months, houses 10+ anthonyi

This one is about 12 weeks in and houses a pair of red splash backs

And lately this one hasnt changed much in about 2 years and houses a wild caught pair of tinctorius ole marie

Some of them haven't even started growing in and some are very well established, I do admit I'm not happy with some of them and will be adding to them when I can. If I remember I'll revisit in about 6 months time and have a look at the changes.