[Guest]

Well i have a 45 gallon vivarium and a 25gallon in the making. that donot have any frogs yet. Still trying to determine what i want. Well heres my question. I hear mixing species is bad, so i was think is mixing powder blue and cobalt tincs, considered mixing species? Would this be a bad thing to do?

 

[amphibianfreak]

Mixing morphs is also not a good idea.

 

[Ryan]

If you do not plan to breed, and have a way to aquire all of one sex, then yes it is possible.

 

[ManofMusic]

Everyone has their own opinions on this. As long as you don't breed them and sell the offspring, and make sure that the morphs don't negatively affect each other's behavior in the tank, you could do it.

-Niels

 

[amphibianfreak]

But make sure you aquire all males, as females will usually fight

 

[Guest]

I have no plans on breeding but aquairing all males will be diffucult since the frogs id be getting would only be a few months old. What i was thinkin would be when they get mature i could seperate them since i have another vivarium in the making and will probly continue to make them, its quite addicting.

 

[mydumname]

If you plan on making more, why don't you keep each viv you make a single species/morph tank. You could also give breeding a shot which would allow you to trade your frogs for others down the road.

 

[Guest]

Yeah the plan would be to seperate them once i can tell what sex they are. Im not sure about breeding maybe once i have a little more experiance ill try my hand at breeding.

 

[Guest]

what is everyones opinion on this if the hybrid frogs are not let out into the hobby and kept by the breeder themself?

 

[Kase]

I don't ever plan on mixing species but if for some odd reason I did yeah I would just keep them. I Wouldn't want that circulating through the hobby.

 

[bbrock]

what is everyones opinion on this if the hybrid frogs are not let out into the hobby and kept by the breeder themself?

I think it is a very bad idea to even produce hybrids because too many things can happen that allow the hybrids to accidentally get out into the hobby. You can't always tell a hybrid just by looking at it and even if YOU can, many others can't. So a hybrid could get mistakenly mixed up with pure animals. Also, what happens if you have to quit the hobby and get rid of the frogs? You could die, get sick, have financial problems, etc. and will the person who acquires these animals later know that they are hybrids? I've seen stuff like this happen before so I stick to my opinion that even producing them for your own "personal" collection is still asking for trouble.

 

[Blort]

what is everyones opinion on this if the hybrid frogs are not let out into the hobby and kept by the breeder themself?

I think it is a very bad idea to even produce hybrids because too many things can happen that allow the hybrids to accidentally get out into the hobby. You can't always tell a hybrid just by looking at it and even if YOU can, many others can't. So a hybrid could get mistakenly mixed up with pure animals. Also, what happens if you have to quit the hobby and get rid of the frogs? You could die, get sick, have financial problems, etc. and will the person who acquires these animals later know that they are hybrids? I've seen stuff like this happen before so I stick to my opinion that even producing them for your own "personal" collection is still asking for trouble.

Brent,

Just curious if there is much information out there on genotypes versus phenotypes of morphs within a species. As you pointed out, truly sorting this out is quite a large task. I have seen that DNA genotyping can be done somewhat cheaply these days. I have no clue personaly, but have been thinking about it lately. Is this at all viable? Would having this data help undo a cross-breeding mess? With the scuttle going on in the classifieds about hybrids, it seems like it could just be a matter of time before cross breeding goes from "what if" to becoming a practice some folks find acceptable.

Marcos

 

[Guest]

I personally would not mix morph because then you might get some hybrids going.


Xavier.

 

[bbrock]

Brent,

Just curious if there is much information out there on genotypes versus phenotypes of morphs within a species. As you pointed out, truly sorting this out is quite a large task. I have seen that DNA genotyping can be done somewhat cheaply these days. I have no clue personaly, but have been thinking about it lately. Is this at all viable? Would having this data help undo a cross-breeding mess? With the scuttle going on in the classifieds about hybrids, it seems like it could just be a matter of time before cross breeding goes from "what if" to becoming a practice some folks find acceptable.

Marcos

Bear in mind that I'm not a geneticist or systematist but here is the little bit I have learned. The "thin-striped" vittatus were originally believed to be lugubris but I had some friends sequence the DNA and test against known sequences in genbank which revealed that they were actually vittatus. Had I paid the full cost for the primers, amplification kit, and sequencing, it would have run about $100. This was many years ago and prices may have come down a little. However, the ability to distinguish between different groups of animals depends on the the portion of the DNA or RNA sequence you use, the amount of variability in that portion of DNA or RNA, and whether you have access to known reference samples. The idea is that you test the sequence and see if it matches up with a known sample. Obviously the more closely related two animals are, the more similar you expect the sequence to be. Different morphs are likely to be exactly the same over the portion of DNA or RNA used for sequencing so you it's unlikely you could tell morphs apart just based on DNA sequencing. The thing to remember is that you are really only looking at a portion of a single chromosome when you sequence, not the whole genome. The bottom line is that at this point I don't think sequencing to tease apart hybrids is practical even though it is theoretically possible.

What IS practical though is a breeding registry that would create a database of pure stock.