Ill start with some of the high points of the last few days. A local guy who has given up marine fish to try his hand at darts came over and purchased the remaining Anthonyi, they make the perfect starter species as they can live in large groups and don't really display any aggression towards each other. I wish him all the best with his new venture and I hope like me, he gets bitten by the bug. The second bit of good news to report is the acquisition of A wild caught pair of powder blue tinctorius, these came down from reading and have taken a few days to emerge from their hiding spot. this morning however they are out and waiting for food. Hopefully they will boost this years breeding and will start over the next couple of weeks.
I suppose to follow on from the good a bit of bad or rather sad news, the cobalt tadpoles I have been posting about excitedly have started to morph which should be a really good thing. My heart sank when the first tad popped his front legs however. To my dismay he had a condition known as SLS or spindly leg syndrome. This condition is quiet frequent in early stage eggs/tadpoles. SLS causes the front legs to be very thin and weak, frogs that do morph with the condition have very very little chance of surviving and there is no known cure at this time. It can also cause the frogs body to be rather malformed and squat.
There are a number of theories of what causes SLS ranging from condition and supplementation of the parent frog, diet of the tadpole, the temperature the tadpoles are kept at, whether or not the parents or the tadpoles have been exposed to UVB light and even down to the type of water the tadpoles are raised in. With this in mind I am determined now more than ever to get things right. I have looked at how my parent frogs are fed and supplemented and have opted to change from the regular calcium and nutrobal routine I had to using a product called Repashy Insect calcium balancer. Several other members of the dart frog community here in the UK have said that this supplement alone for the parent frogs significantly reduced the occurrence of SLS or eliminated it altogether. I have also looked at the temperature I keep my tadpoles at. The tubs used are placed in a bain marie style incubator using a submersible water heater to warm the water which, in turn warms the tadpole tubs. It turns out the heater I have been using was rubbish and the tadpole temperatures was upping and downing over the course of the day and night. I have now upgraded the heater to a much better make and model which will hopefully keep the temperature stable. Here's hoping for more tadpoles soon!!!
