Cham Eggs!!!

Man what a busy evening so far. As well as the mind blowing excitement that was the Ole marie tincs laying their first batch off eggs I've had a female chameleon in the sand box all day. She laid 39 eggs and looks cream cracker'd now so have taken the laying box away and will make sure she gets loads of food tomorrow morning and plenty to drink over the next couple of days =). Sometimes I wish I could get an early night. I'll follow all of today's activity up with a much bigger update with pictures after my weekend away for Kel's birthday.

The Ole have laid!!!

Great news!!! the ole marie pair that i picked up earlier in the year have just laid their first batch of eggs. Im not going to get too excited but these do look really good. the jelly is very uniform and the eggs are jet black. Here's looking forward to the pitter patter of tiny froggies!!!

Frogs for sale

We have the following livestock currently available:

10 x Epipedobates anthonyi for sale at £20 each or £150 the group, these make fantastic beginner frogs who are relatively small and reproduce steadily once established. They prefer a semi arboreal vivarium with lots of open platforms/large leaves.

2 x Dendrobates tinctorius azureus (unsexed) juveniles, £50 each £80 for the two. These are surplus to breeding requirements and will be sexable soon. They are best kept in pairs in a fair sized terrestrial style vivarium.

Contact me via message here or email ben@theclarkeasylum.com to enquire

A good evening so far

I've come home to chaos in the jungle this evening. The newest clutch of tinctorius cobalt eggs are hatching. The oldest of our original cobalt tads has now got his full strength back legs and is starting to get his yellow colouration and two of the female Yemen chameleons are looking plump and full of eggs and look just about ready to lay!!!. Its going to be a busy few days.

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A bit of a move about

Today I have moved the nine Tricolor's that I kept for myself in to the tank that houses my current group of three. The frogs I have are already adult's and I need to repopulate the tank and get some breeding going again after a couple of losses this year. The nine I have introduced are getting bigger by the day and are a comfortable size to move easily. With another ten frogs that are available to sell now and a few more that I will be keeping hold of a little longer they have done brilliantly considering I only picked up 24 tadpoles. Here are the nine I'm keeping getting their first look at their new home:

I realise there are only eight frogs in these pictures, one was so excited he exploded out of the box and into the tank.
If you are interested in these frogs they make a great starter species. I am selling the remaining frogs at £20 each and I'm willing to do a deal on multiple's contact me either through PM on the blog or through my facebook page.

Another Egyptian god comes home

Last week we had a new chameleon arrive at Rural Jungle HQ. This time a really stunning male panther chameleon (Furcifer pardalis). He is a red bar Ambilobe locale. Ambilobe is a locality from the northwest Madagascar between Ambanja and Diego Suarez. Ambilobe panthers are sometimes referred to as Sirama Panther Chameleons after the neighbouring town as well as by the designer name "Picasso" Panther Chameleons. this locality is divided into two main colour patterns, red bar and blue bar. The overall colour combinations are quite variable and consist of green, blue, yellow, orange and red but the red and blue bar Ambilobes are divided based on the primary colour of their bars.

Hers he is looking a bit drab at the moment:

He is mid shed so his colours don't look fantastic but here's a link to a picture of the Sire (father) and a shameless plug for a friend Click here to see the sire.

We have decided to call him Horus after the Egyptian god of the sky.

Damn those little cannibals!!!

Unfortunately we have lost 3 of the largest cobalt tadpoles to cannibalism. I have not been able to feed them enough to stop it and they have started picking on each other. Today I will be separating the tads into individual containers, something which I was hoping to avoid. The extra water changes needed while raising them this way can be a pain but it will stop unnecessary losses. Fingers crossed the remaining tads get through and we start to see some positive results in terms of egg laying, which has been a bit slower due to the colder weather. There is a good batch of eggs developing nicely under a coconut hut so fingers crossed we get more tads in about 10 days.
Here's a few shots of the new tadpole tubs. I'm hoping there is enough water in these. I'm going to start planning a tadpole rearing system that is filtered it may help out a lot as we start getting more and more.

Tinctorius Tadpoles can take up to 120 days to develop and a few of the older tadpoles have their back legs now. The bits on the surface is food, I had just fed them when I took these pictures. Each tadpole is now going to be raised individually in these tubs in a 'tadpole tea', which is a mixture of red bush tea and de-chlorinated tap water with a stem from an elodea species pond plant. not only does this provide cover but I have found it to be a good source of extra food.

The cannibalism is unfortunate but you live and learn, hopefully I'll get this sorted and find a rearing method that will produce significant results.

Update on tadpole progress

Just thought I'd write a note to keep you all up to date with our current tadpole progress. So far we have had 10 viable and 4 non viable tadpoles from the large cobalt pair. Currently from 4 batches we have 6 big tads that are just starting to show their back legs and the largest is starting to gain a bit of colouration in places, 1 medium/large tadpole the only survivor from a batch of four that hatched and 3 tiny ones from two separate clutches that hatched at around the same time.
All of the Tricolor tadpoles have been out of the water for nearly 3 months and once I have selected the frogs I wish to keep I will be selling the rest off.
The azureus have been moved to a more terrestrial viv in the hope that the larger male and female get it together and start laying. I'm hoping now to re-do their old tank and move the Leucomelas into something with a bit more climbing space.
Ill post some progress shots over the next couple of days.

Its finally happened!!!!!!

After years of keeping poison dart frogs I think tonight has to be the height of the whole experience. Ill start from the beginning..... The cobalt's that have been laying none stop since I got them and about 10 days ago a clutch of 10 eggs were laid. I left them in the tank and they developed nicely although 6 out of the 10 went mouldy. The remaining 4 were looking good and yesterday morning 3 out of the 4 were wriggling free of the jelly mass. To my dismay I interrupted the father as he was sat amongst them. Well 3 came out and went into the tadpole raising tank I have set up and the remaining one who did not seem to want to come out stayed put in the viv with its parents. Well tonight I came home and first thing first went to check on our remaining tad.... he wasn't there. I panicked initially and then thought.... DAD. The male frog had returned to his clutch and picked up the last tadpole and is currently carrying it around on his back looking for a suitable site to deposit it. Here are the only pictures I was brave enough to take not wanting to interrupt him: