[tacojuice]

My first cobalt tinc died at probably under 2 years, and the second was about 4. There's not a whole lot I can do to investigate why, and when I start over it will probably be with a large community of leucs or auratus.

There are so many things that I could have done wrong that I am not sure why they died, especially 2 years apart and with no warning. It could have been lack of water, not enough food, something in the food or water, mold, I keep seeing mention of skin diseases, or for all I know it got bit by a spider or something. The first was a skeleton, mixed in with the roots of the plants when I found it. I could barely tell it wasn't roots. This one was in its coconut hut, laid out flat and dried out like a mummy.

I am cleaning the terrarium for storage, and I want to be certain that if there is a disease involved, it is gone before I introduce new frogs. It may be 2 or 3 years before I try this again. I've tossed the plants and soil and the first layer of screen. I'm leaning toward bleach, followed by extensive rinsing for the gravel, glass, water dishes and anything else I choose to keep.

Is bleach ok for cleaning a vivarium and its components if it will be a while before frogs are reintroduced?

Are there sure indications that a frog is about to croak? Eating less and spending more time in the water are tough to observe sometimes.

Thanks, everyone. This is really bothering me. I've lost a lot of fish, but the frogs are different. Maybe less interactive than a lot of my pets, but special.

 

[tacojuice]

Time to Recover

I'm clearly a bad parent right now, so I'm waiting until I can have a terrarium in a main room instead of tucked away in the back bedroom, which requires a house, which requires a good job, which requires finishing my bachelor's, which is why I'm going to wait a while to start over. Nothing against raising frogs! Quite the opposite; I want to do it right.

 

[BOOSHIFIED]

Do you have heat and humidity readings?

 

[tacojuice]

I try to keep the temperature in the upper 70's, but sometimes it drops to the high 60's at night. The heat/humidity meter I got seemed to stop working when it was in the tank, so it's on top by the bulb and does no good with humidity. I think the humidity was too much for that meter, because it always stayed at the same number. I mist with a spray bottle, and I fill the spray bottle with a Brita pitcher. I also Brita filter water for the dishes, but it's impossible to keep the mold out all the time.

 

[tacojuice]

I haven't got a new reading on the humidity for a while, but there's usually condensation on the glass. The last couple weeks, I was adding a lot of water to the dishes, so she may have been soaking more or it may have been evaporating faster as we near summer.

 

[srrrio]

Cleaning your tank with bleach would do the trick, personally I would ditch the gravel it would be easier to just replace it when the time comes.

Actually I think you kept your frogs alive longer then a lot people with theri first frogs. Anyway, since they died 2 years apart, I wonder about supplements. Did you dust fruit flies with calcium or vitamins ?

It looks like you are new to Dendroboard, you will probably discover much info that will help tons when you decide to keep frogs again.

Sally

 

[Rain_Frog]

I also Brita filter water for the dishes, but it's impossible to keep the mold out all the time.

Are you making sure that the carbon in the Brita filter is changed regularly?

And, what supplements did you use?

 

[tacojuice]

The water was always a concern, as amphibians absorb everything, but the only indication I could have of the filter needing to be changed was taste. Perhaps it could be changed more often, but my family was using it also, and my wife has a pretty acute sense of "funny" tastes.

I used a calcium supplement. I think it's Herpical, but the label fell off pretty quickly 4 years ago, so that's uncertain. Definitely calcium, though. I used it every week for a while until somebody told me they can have too much. Since then probably once every 3-4 weeks.

I have also been getting lazy about cleaning the water dishes. It's difficult to keep up with the growth of what I hope is algae.

I'll definitely need a better heat/humidity gauge next time, and probably an automatic mister.

The first several months, I think I overdid it, and the last couple months I got busy and they're in a back room, so I probably neglected her and let her bake under a heat lamp without enough moisture.

I still suspect the first one was frogicide. I have heard from several breeders that they are two females, and two females fight to the death. Then again, they are supposed to be fine if they are raised together, at least until a male is introduced.

I'm probably just getting careless and introducing germs or detergents or something in the tank when I feed, water, and landscape. If that's the case, or if I malnourished her, that's cruel.

Yes, I'm new to dendroboard as a member, but the guy who sold me the frogs told me about it so I've scanned topics on a few occasions.

Thanks, everyone.

 

[BOOSHIFIED]

Once a week is fine for supplements. Def need more then once every few weeks.

You also need new supplements. Most people suggest getting new supplements every 6 months. If you went a little past that it's not a he deal but 4 years is way too much.

I would also find a different way to keep your tank warm other then a heat lamp. Heat lamps usually get way too hot.

The water was always a concern, as amphibians absorb everything, but the only indication I could have of the filter needing to be changed was taste. Perhaps it could be changed more often, but my family was using it also, and my wife has a pretty acute sense of "funny" tastes.

I used a calcium supplement. I think it's Herpical, but the label fell off pretty quickly 4 years ago, so that's uncertain. Definitely calcium, though. I used it every week for a while until somebody told me they can have too much. Since then probably once every 3-4 weeks.

I have also been getting lazy about cleaning the water dishes. It's difficult to keep up with the growth of what I hope is algae.

I'll definitely need a better heat/humidity gauge next time, and probably an automatic mister.

The first several months, I think I overdid it, and the last couple months I got busy and they're in a back room, so I probably neglected her and let her bake under a heat lamp without enough moisture.

I still suspect the first one was frogicide. I have heard from several breeders that they are two females, and two females fight to the death. Then again, they are supposed to be fine if they are raised together, at least until a male is introduced.

I'm probably just getting careless and introducing germs or detergents or something in the tank when I feed, water, and landscape. If that's the case, or if I malnourished her, that's cruel.

Yes, I'm new to dendroboard as a member, but the guy who sold me the frogs told me about it so I've scanned topics on a few occasions.

Thanks, everyone.

 

[Ed]

Once a week is fine for supplements. Def need more then once every few weeks.

You also need new supplements. Most people suggest getting new supplements every 6 months. If you went a little past that it's not a he deal but 4 years is way too much.

I would also find a different way to keep your tank warm other then a heat lamp. Heat lamps usually get way too hot.

The frequency of supplementation is really dependent on the feeding schedule. If he is feeding three times or less a week, then the food should be dusted at each feeding. If he is feeding four or more times a week, then alternating the days the food is dusted is okay (but can have the animals not feed on those days if the supplement is unpalatable).

Ed

 

[Enlightened Rogue]

Re: Time to Recover

I'm clearly a bad parent right now, so I'm waiting until I can have a terrarium in a main room instead of tucked away in the back bedroom, which requires a house, which requires a good job, which requires finishing my bachelor's, which is why I'm going to wait a while to start over. Nothing against raising frogs! Quite the opposite; I want to do it right.

Absolutely the right way to go.
Please don`t take this the wrong way, but from what I`ve read here I`m surprised they lasted that long.
It`s cool, many of us (myself included) have been there.
It took me about 6 months of reading EVERYTHING I could find before I took the plunge, and I still don`t know squat!!
There`s many people on here more than willing to share their knowledge and help...all you need to do is ask.
You`ll do better next time around.

John

 

[Rain_Frog]

I used a calcium supplement. I think it's Herpical, but the label fell off pretty quickly 4 years ago, so that's uncertain. Definitely calcium, though. I used it every week for a while until somebody told me they can have too much. Since then probably once every 3-4 weeks.

Honestly I'm starting to believe that the no. 1 failure with frog keeping-- even for average pet owners who buy a white's tree frog from the petstore-- is providing proper nutrition.

I know many people that have kept a single pet treefrog or firebellied toad and report after the same time frame of 2-4 years of losing the animal. All they did was feed crickets without supplementation. That is probably why there is increased reports of longevity with Xenopus because Xenopus will take fortified dry food.

Even for myself, I had many, many issues with spindly leg until I started using retinol for my mantellas. I also noticed how frogs got bolder and fewer health issues when I started using Repashy.

Nutrition is a complicated subject and even regular pet care books do not mention the proper ratio of nutrients amphibians need.

 

[Ed]

The reason amphibian nutrition is complicated and poorly covered in most of the books on amphibian husbandry is in large part because it has been a evolving field with large breakthroughs in the last five to ten years. It has reduced a lot of the voodoo but not eliminated all of it.

Ed

 

[tacojuice]

Yeah. I certainly overcorrect. I was spending too much time messing with the tank at first and was told to leave them alone, and then I appear to have left them alone too much.

The best balance I had on dusting was when I would feed 3 times a week and dust one of those three feedings.

I also spent a few months at a time feeding two kinds of fruit flies (I would be waiting for my wingless to show up from edsflymeat and run down to buy flightless from Petsmart in the interim, and then end up raising cultures of both for several weeks), alternating when there was a shortage of one and feeding both sometimes the same day.

I prefer the wingless, but I'm not sure which the frog preferred. Even feeding both at once, I couldn't tell which she went after. She liked to wait for me to leave most of the time. Is there a particular fly that is more nutritious?

Tried pinheads. They chased the froglets around and smelled awful, so I never went back to those, even as the surviving frog got 3 or 4 times as big. Wingless flies just seemed to work better, but the larger flightless were easier to dust.

For dusting, my method was to pour flies from the culture into a container of the calcium supplement, shake it around, and then wait impatiently while the flies oriented themselves and found their way to the edge and fell into the tank. The flies were usually slow to cooperate, and I have 3 fish tanks and a dog waiting on me, too, so I neglected the dusting more and more lately. Is there a more efficient way to dust than that, or are the flies more responsive with less dust to climb out of? I usually had plenty of calcium left over after I got the flies out, and they'd get stuck in it sometimes and I'd have to knock them out with cut leaves.

Thanks, everybody. It's good to know that the first-attempt frogs don't live 15 years.

(Similarly, my first arowana got his eyes eaten and the second was a jumper, dried out in the carpet when I got home, so I'm familiar with the learning curve on fish.)

 

[tacojuice]

I just ran an image search on those xenopus. They don't look too picky!

 

[tacojuice]

For lighting, I was using Exo-Terra Repti-Glo 5.0. I have 2 but usually only use one, on a timer, and periodically move it from one end of the tank to the other. The top of the tank is a screen with an aquarium lid (hinged fiberglass) over the top, which I could move and fold in half to adjust humidity and air circulation to what I thought looked reasonable. How I configured the bulbs and the fiberglass varied based on the seasons and what the rest of the room felt like. There was a high subjectivity factor, but I don't think that changed enough recently to be fatal. Again, subjective. I was never in a 20 gallon terrarium with a heat lamp and algae in the water with house plants and a coconut for shade, so I don't know how it felt.

Speaking of which, is there a good way to clean these Exo-Terra water dishes? There are a lot of geometric issues with getting a scrubber into those grooves. The smooth insides are fine, but the outside always has a green residue.

 

[Woodsman]

Hi Tacojuice,

When you get ready to try again rearng dart frogs, I think you would have good success with the D. leucomelas. In my experience, they are much more tolerant of "mistakes" than D. tinctorius. I would recommed trying to establish a pair, though, as raising groups is more complicated and doesn't often result in "happy" frogs. Most dart frogs really prefer to be in pairs.

Good luck, Richard.

 

[illinoisfrogs]

I would always keep the top on. They need very high humidity year round, and it's more "mistake proof" to go with a solid top, then partial screen. Depending on the time of year, and where you live, a partial screen will make the tank pretty dry.

Also, definitely never use a heat lamp. The ambient temp in your bedroom is fine, unless it's below the upper 60s or above the upper 70s......

If you use a glass top, you also don't need a water dish to keep up humidity. Just regular misting.

And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but a calcium supplement that's 4 years old wouldn't be very good any more, would it? You should pitch it and buy a new one much more often, like every 6-12 months. (or so I've read)

 

[Ed]

Supplements as a general rule should be replaced every six months or so... a general rule of thumb when feeding the frogs is that if you are feeding three times a week or less, you should supplement with every feeding, if you are feeding four times or more a week, you can alternate between feedings (Assuming that the frogs don't begin to reject dusted flies).

If you were just using Rep-cal then the frogs were unsupplemented on a number of factors including water soluble vitamins...

Ed

 

[WendySHall]

... a general rule of thumb when feeding the frogs is that if you are feeding three times a week or less, you should supplement with every feeding, if you are feeding four times or more a week, you can alternate between feedings...

I generally feed 6 out of 7 days a week and dust every time with Repashy Calcium + ICB (will be starting with the new Repashy Calcium Plus next week). Is this too much? And if so, what type of effects does this have on the frogs? And do I need anything else?