[gluedl]

Two white foot froglets hunting springtails

And a third froglet I found today

 

[RogierT]

Oophaga Sylvatica Diablo has been my dream frog for yeaaaars. Recently started again with Azureus, but my 2nd tank hopefully will have some legal Oophaga Sylvatica. You have some magic looking frogs! Congrats on the breeding.

How do you keep them? Tank size, temperature, UV or without? Water regime, food etc?

 

[gluedl]

Oophaga Sylvatica Diablo has been my dream frog for yeaaaars. Recently started again with Azureus, but my 2nd tank hopefully will have some legal Oophaga Sylvatica. You have some magic looking frogs! Congrats on the breeding.

How do you keep them? Tank size, temperature, UV or without? Water regime, food etc?

Thanks!

I have various tank sizes and always try to give them generous amounts of space. I have two groups of 4 histrionica that live in 70x70x90cm (l, w, h) tanks. The ones you see here:

https://www.dendroboard.com/threads/ventilated-viv-build.361903/

The rest of the adults are kept in pairs in 60x60x70cm tanks, which have been working fine for me. All my tanks have some kind of active ventilation for internal air movement and are “euro style tanks” with a ventilation mesh below the sliding doors and on top of the tanks.

I like to have lots of bromeliads with overlapping leaves – even if some die along the way. The frogs seem to love the shaded spaces and the ability to quickly hide if they feel the need to.
I use the MRS misting system with 0.4mm stainless steel nozzles, 15 sec rain in the morning and 15 sec in the evening. I use a mixture of RO with 10% tap water. The frog room has a base temperature of 20°C, tanks have a temperature gradient of 26°C top to about 23°C bottom, during the day, 20°C at night. Peaks were reached this summer of about 30°C at the top, about 26°C at the bottom. I don’t measure humidity, as I have yet to find a reliable hygrometer.

They all get UV with Arcadia T5 Forest Tubes, for 2h, every weekend, down from 2h every day as I stated in other threads.

I feed them springtails, pea aphids (once a week) and ffs. I feed a small amount every day. My ff mix is a bit different from what most people use. I boil leftover fruits and vegetables (mostly apples, carrots, peas, lentils, potatoes, and bananas), blend them into some kind of soup. Then I add amino acids, astaxanthin, apple vinegar, fructose and spirulina powder. To get a creamy consistency, I then add a mixture of oatmeal and dry yeast (about 5/1 ratio oatmeal /yeast). I have read somewhere that ffs like chunky mixtures, so I do not fully blend the oatmeal.

I use Repashy Cal+ at every feeding, seldomly the VitA+ from Repashy and no Superpig.

Egg laying seldomly happens on bromeliad leaves since I introduced tad-pools (highly recommend those) and pesto jars covered in silicone and peat.

 

[RogierT]

Awesome thanks!

Also read on Erik's frogs page he really well ventilates the tanks by having them off the wall, you use some extra methods there?

With regards to the groups, are they tolerant to each other?

 

[gluedl]

Also read on Erik's frogs page he really well ventilates the tanks by having them off the wall, you use some extra methods there?

During summer, windows are always open when outside temps allow for it, during winter, I open a window while I take my shower before going to work. Every tank has it's own little "ventilation system" to keep the air inside the tanks moving and heated:
- here you see both air in- and outlets, the foam is hiding grey PVC wastewater pipes which work as ventilation ducts

- the PVC pipes go to the "ventilation cabinet" which holds a 100mm PC fan, powered by an adjustable 3-12V DC power supply - the adjustable voltage sets the fan's RPM. Inside the cabinet, I also placed an UV-C bulb to desinfect the moving air and heat it to 25°C. I got rid of the UV-C bulb as I could smell ozone almost immediately after firing it up. It has been replaced by a normal 13W low energy bulb, for simple heat purposes.

- here is another view of the cabinet on top of a tank

-> Fresh air in the morning for the whole room, air circulation 24h/7

With regards to the groups, are they tolerant to each other?

Yes and no. None of them are the same, character wise and I don't want to give you a general rule for groups, except for: keep them in pairs. I have seen an Anchicayensis male being totally intolerant of another male, chasing it around constantly, while the hunted one did not even fight back, stopped eating and would have died without seprating him. I have seen 2 pacasi males fight, where both were dominant and would fight back and were not able to settle, I have seen 2 Solanensis and 2 Andresi "choco yellow" males (in 2 tanks) get along fine. I have noticed whole clutches disappear in tanks with 2 females - I guess that one female would eat/swipe away the eggs of the other female, without seeing it with my eyes. A dominated male histrionica might not fully recover from bullying and might never call, even after being isolated with a 100% sure female. I have such a frog...

It is rather difficult to find histrionica / sylvatica pairs - most keepers will not sell a pair that successfully breeds. So you end up buying multiple (young) frogs, hoping to establish a pair. I strongly recommend having at least a spare tank at hand, so you can transfer a bullied frog as soon as you see fighting. You will also learn that calling while courting is different from calling while fighting, or feeling threatened/defending territory.

Side note 1: the courting behaviour of my sylvatica is much rougher compared to my histrionica. One could easily confuse sylvatica breeding (they jump at each other, males try to perform an amplexus even when the female does not want to, the male then angrily chases the female while calling,...) with histrionica male bullying/fighting.

Side note 2: I fully respect Erik and his experience, he has been an inspiration and a pioneer when it comes to obligates. Yet, I don't agree when he states that some large obligate's (for example Solanensis) offspring will have ugly patterns when not exposed to UV. I know at least 2 people breeding them without UV, and the offspring have been top notch.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

They all get UV with Arcadia T5 Forest Tubes, for 2h, every weekend, down from 2h every day as I stated in other threads.

Was there any reason you changed their exposure frequency?

 

[gluedl]

Was there any reason you changed their exposure frequency?

Several reasons. What made me add UV-B bulbs firsthand was Erik Schoop's website. He states that the bare minimum in husbandry is not enough to make large obligates thrive, the maximum should be done and states that successful breeding and getting nice looking froglets would require UVs. Which made sense for me at the time.

This thread was really food for thought:
https://www.dendroboard.com/threads...ral-discussion-split-off-from-large-oophaga-specific-thread.367137/post-3165695 and made me doubt I was on the right path.

Visiting other large obligate breeders and seeing that their frogs were regularly producing nice offspring without UVs.

And finally the basking thing. I am also guilty of arguing that my frogs will bask in UV light when they need to. I do see that behavior in winter months, less in summer months. So I decided to replace the Arcadia UV tube by a 20W LED Spotlight from Amazon. The frogs basked in the spot lit by that light too, not more or less then with the UV light. Do they seek UVs or heat or both? I am unsure, but I try giving less UV at the moment, as an UV deficiency might be more easily corrected then an overdose.

 

[RogierT]

Interesting! Thanks for the information with regard to ventilation!

Been planning to build a large tank (300cm wide, 200cm high, 150cm deep), in this paludarium I was planning to place a group of juvenile Oophaga Sylvatica and keep them there. It is the colder part of the house. Still have a couple of tanks as backup when one gets oppressed. But I suspect that the moment I release the frogs, it will be hard to get one out in a large tank. So in doubt if a large tank is a smart plan.

Have 1 paludarium 130cm x 70x70 cm in the living room, the only concern is the temperature there. Things to think about..
Anyway thanks!

 

[gluedl]

Here's a little update on the sylvatica, about 6 months OOW, albeit with mixed feelings. On the bright side, two have brighter colors now, their legs have turned white, they are active and seem healthy. That pinkish red is just stunninh IMO.

And then there is this froglet. It does not grow, it only added about 2mm to it's body length during a period of 6months - that's a film canister on it's left. It is active, hunting, eating, but it's body does not develop (see the leg color that does not change compared to the other 2) - pretty gutted about that.

I hope it's the odd sigularity and not a general genetic trait...

The parents for comparision:
male

female

Further, I can report, that my sylvatica do not take care of their froglets. I have witnessed pumilio parents encourage their newly morphed froglets to hunt for prey with calls, even pushing the little guy towards the springtails. Histrionica do care for their offspring, but to a lesser extend. The histo dad follows it's offspring and calls to encourage but does never touch/push the froglet. My sylvatica don't care at all. The sylvatica froglets also seem to grow slower than my histos. The histos I have raised, would have reached about half the parents size in 6 months, the sylvatica are more about a third of the size of the parents. I plan to move the 2 healthy froglets to a spare tank this weekend and keep the smaller one on it's own. If I am lucky enough to get more froglets this year, I will separate them from the parents ASAP and try raising them on their own to see if there is a difference.

 

[gluedl]

I do not see the pictures I uploaded yesterday, trying again

Male

Female

 

[Socratic Monologue]

I do not see the pictures I uploaded yesterday, trying again

Thank you for reposting them. There has been an intermittent problem with attachments, and the developers have been notified and are working on fixing it.