[KeroKero]

The 'tricolor's stripes and color' thread (http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4978) turned up an interesting topic not just isolated to E. tricolor but could effect any species that seems particularly diet-dependent color. While many of us have debated the use of color suppliments (peprika/beta carotine/canthoxanthin for reds/yellows and sprulina/chlorella for blues and greens) for those who DO suppliment to attempt to get full wild type color, the debate is when to do it.

To summarize what's been talked about:

Brought up on the thread by Brent (bbrock) was a certain window when the frogs are young for best supplimentation to effect coloration. For example adult E. tricolor 'santa isabel' that have never been supplimented are a bubblegum pink color, and from personal experience these (adult) animals put on the same regiment to color up as my other tricolors (including the same bloodline) don't color up much more than they already are. Supplimented frogs (fed sprulina tadpole diets) of this morph may get a nice blood red but may never the lipstick red of the wild frogs from what I've seen. From my own animals with significant supplimenting via beta carotine in all stages of life (including tadpole) have gotten to be this bright red, or pretty darn close.

Quoting Brent (cuz he says it best):
"Ben Green recently posted pics of vittatus that showed one that was fed beta carotene fish flake food as a tadpole and another that was not. My experience with this same line has been that if you don't feed the color enhancing flake food, then you will never get the bright red-orange stripes no matter how much you supplement with paprika after they morph. Like Corey, I think the tadpole stage is really the key point to get the color on frogs. That's a little hard to do with pumilio [and other obligate eggfeeders]"

If Ben could post that pic here, that would be awesome

Often these days I hear about people feeding sprulina powder as their tadpole food and I wonder at the coloration and size of these animals later on (I've seen a general trend of small froglets recently so I'm not at all satisfied with this). I take colors close to wild type as a healthy sign, as well as large froglets coming out of the water. When I was breeding good numbers of E. tricolor a couple years ago I worked with their diets as tads after seeing relatively uncared for froglets (morphed out in tanks) morph out twice the size of my first batch of "specially cared for" tads.

While I realize some of the small froglets might be due to inbreeding and what not, I do believe a lot of it has to do with size as well, at least from my experiences with tricolor, truncatus, and imitator. I don't keep springtails because none of these frogs morphed out to a size where they didn't take melanogaster or even hydei (tricolor) as their first meal.

Thoughts, comments, and tadpole care/feeding regiments wanted!

 

[bbrock]

If Ben could post that pic here, that would be awesome

http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4868&highlight=vittatus

 

[bbrock]

I don't know why this thread is dead. It's a great subject. So I'll add... Matt Mirabello ran controlled experiments where he could consistently produce a skunk or non-skunk pattern based on how he raised the tads. I believe that communal rearing produced skunk patterns but could be wrong. I've raised auratus communally in large tubs (5-6 gal. of water) and did not see a consistent pattern. Interesting.

 

[KeroKero]

Its funny this was more popular under the last thread than standing on its own lol. Matt M. also had some nice stuff on tinc coloration when supplimented..... and I dunno if you've seen his tads or froglets but they are massive so his diet obviously has something other diets lack. I'll bug him to post since he doesn't read the boards much.

There is also the possible difference in froglet size and hardiness with the thumbnails.... parent raised vs. human raised.

Then there is HOW we raise the tads, could we be a little *too* controlling of the environment? Tricolors showed an increase in size by grazing the "sludge" found in many fish tanks (mosty bacteria grazing) and isn't found in the nice new (or freshly cleaned) containers many tads go into. I know some others have had similar luck with this and thumbnail tads. Just rising and putting new water in, not scrubbing the sides to get rid of the bacteria slime.

 

[bbrock]

I couldn't remember the details on Matt's tincs and yes, his frogs are nice looking honkers.

My thoughts on tadpole morph size is that it is influenced by time in the water. Too warm of temps, of course, can speed development and lead to frogs morphing fast and small. I wonder if a rich diet could do similar. However, P. vittatus tads reared on their own by just grazing on algae and microbes living in the pool in the viv tend to morph smaller than flake fed tads. But they are very robust and I've never seen one morph out in the viv that didn't survive and thrive.

I guess we have our own private thread.

 

[tikifrog]

Sorry to intrude! I'd like to jump in with galactonotus if I may. I have had a small clutch of yellow galacts morph. The parents are a nice yellow. The previous batch had color similar to the parents. These are much more orange. They are 10 days out of the water. The previous tads were fed primarily an algae mix, and were morphed in the viv with the parents. This group received mostly "rich mix" and other prepared foods. Their eggs were pulled and the tads were raised in 16oz delis. Is it possible that these froglets may fade to a more yellow color as they age? Has anyone encountered variations in their galact clutches?

John R.

 

[Guest]

I haven't really tested the timing needed to add the color enhancers with the vittatus tads. I feed on alternating cycle of color flakes and spirullina flakes. I have a few tads in the same group right now coloring up. They are more yellow than normal. I haven't feed them the color enhancing food for the last two weeks, so I am guessing that the color food needs to be fed when the tads are starting to color up ( just after the appearance of hind legs). Interesting thread.

 

[bbrock]

I haven't really tested the timing needed to add the color enhancers with the vittatus tads. I feed on alternating cycle of color flakes and spirullina flakes. I have a few tads in the same group right now coloring up. They are more yellow than normal. I haven't feed them the color enhancing food for the last two weeks, so I am guessing that the color food needs to be fed when the tads are starting to color up ( just after the appearance of hind legs). Interesting thread.

Man this thread is getting crowded ;-) Before I went the lazy route and let the frogs do the work, I fed vittatus once a week with color flake from the time they were eating flake.

Many years ago someone said that blue and green colors tend to be structrual while reds and yellows are pigment. That's true in birds but I don't know about frogs. If so, it suggests that supplementing with spirulina should have no effect. So I'd like to hear more about trials of using spirulina and any other blue/green supplement and why you think it did or did not work.

 

[Dancing frogs]

Is that to say (about the green being structural), that a frog will be just as green whether it grows up on spirulina or fed eggs (imitator for instance)? Or does it mean that if the animal grows up without proper diet, they will never be as green as an animal who had?

 

[bbrock]

Is that to say (about the green being structural), that a frog will be just as green whether it grows up on spirulina or fed eggs (imitator for instance)? Or does it mean that if the animal grows up without proper diet, they will never be as green as an animal who had?

The insinuation was that the blue or green is just there regardless of diet. I know in birds these colors tend to be due to the structure of the feather influencing the way they reflect light. But in frogs I wonder if it is a combination. It's pretty clear that we don't have as many color problems with blue and green frogs so there may be something to this. On the other hand, people, including me, have dusted ff with spirulina for auratus and felt like they got better color. In my case I think it may have been as much imagination as anything else.

And then I start wondering about possible combinations. Maybe there are green/blue structural colors that are modified by red/yellow pigment and vice versa.

But back to the red color problem. I still want to try red spider mites.

 

[Guest]

red spider mites now that sounds interesting. anyone know how they get there colour?

 

[KeroKero]

My personal experience with keeping/breeding blue and green frogs isn't much. Looking back on it... its just odd. They've mostly been red, orange, or yellow lol. I need to branch out.

All my imitators morphed out the same bright colores as their parents, not matter the diet. This included green imitators, an orange imitator, and intermedius. Supplimenting didn't change their colors noticibly.

Azureus are blue no matter what you feed them. There are those that are supplimented with something that border on purple, but thats more of an "improvement" (probibly beyond wild type colors) but I don't see the colors as being anywhere near diet dependent like the reds in tricolors and pumilio.

I think there are varying degrees of diet dependency of color. Many tincs don't show yellows or oranges nearly as nice as the WCs, and supplimenting helps, thats somewhere in the middle between truely diet dependent (pumilio and tricolors) and "improvement".

This different could come in how the colors are expressed in the frog's skin. There are a number of chromataphores responsible for color. Melantophores are the obvious black or brown. Xanthrophores (and erythrophores if you want to be picky) generally do the reds and yellows - this is the pigment controlled by carotines in the skin (and influenced by diet). Iridiphores are generally responsible for the blues and greens - the group generally not changed much by diet. So why are there reds, oranges, and yellows that are very diet dependent, and a bunch (mostly thumbnails come to mind) that aren't diet dependent at all?

Iridiphores are actually capable of producing any color on a frog depending on how they reflect light, these are NOT diet dependent colors, and since they can produce any color, we can hypothesize that the non-diet dependent reds and what not are actually iridiphores. Most of these will appear "metallic" looking, like the orange of intermedius and most thumbnails that I've seen up close.

This is actually also something I've noticed with different bloodlines of truncatus. In the multiple lines of yellow truncatus there are the "flat" yellows and the yellows with a more metallic "orangey yellow" (Kelly/Black Jungle line). Due to not having the animals to test my theories, I haven't gotten to play around with diet and color on these guys, but I believe the Kelly line carries more iridiphore coloration, at least in the stripes, (the metallicness seen in the bloodline) than say the Samples bloodline, which has a flat yellow color.

That was a fun little digression, I was thinking about it all through herpetology class today after we talked about amphibian coloration.

I want you to try the spider mites too, lol. I'm crazy about possible new food items, especially if they are tiny enough to feed to the really small froglets. Aphids would be great too if I had enough frogs to get me to bother keeping them longer than the summer.

 

[KeroKero]

Oh, kinda forgot a bit on the green. Green isn't usually a color produced by the chromataphores, but is usually an interaction between xanthophores and iridiphores (yellow + blue = green). In green auratus you might get a bit of a change in color with supplimenting, but it might only be a little bit because you are only really influincing half the color (in this case the yellow, make it a bit more vibrant).

Thus the "intermediately" influenced colors are probibly the half iridiophore, half xanthophore colors.

 

[*GREASER*]

I wish I knew a way to produce spider mites. I cant even imagine how red they would turn a tri color! I really need to get a mortar and pestal for my paprika. It just isnt sticking to the ffs enough and I really want to get these guys colored up as soon as I can now that you guys seem to think the longer you wait the less color they will gain from supplementation. Right now thay are over two months old.

 

[*GREASER*]

Hey Kero what school are you going to that you are taking a course in Herpetology? Im thinking about going back to school for biology but I really cant handle any math and all and its really discourageing me from even starting.

 

[joshua_delancey69]

Ok just out of curiostiy where can i get a powder form of peprika/beta carotine/canthoxanthin for reds/yellows it would be interesting to test a couple of these theories on my own.....I like to reasearch with some things and this would be a safe project........thanks

 

[geckguy]

Most grocery stores carry paprika, it is in the spice section. It usually isnt fine enough to stick to flies so I recommend using a mortar/pestle or putting it in a blender to grind it up a little. I have used it on my leucs and they definitely seemed to color up, I havent supplemented with it for awhile and they are almost yellow.

 

[bbrock]

I use to get red spider mites from an entomologist friend who used them as a model for population biology experiments. His culture method was simply to grow a bench full of pea plants under lights and let the mites go to town. All the plants were sickly from the infestation so if a plant died, he just replaced it with a fresh one.

Do a google for tanning supplements and canthoxanthin. You should find sources. Just BE CAREFUL with it because it can be toxic if overdosed. Fish food for color enhancement is a good source for beta carotene as are carrots and sweet potato. You could either gut load crix or dry and grind to make powder.

 

[joshua_delancey69]

Great info Brock

 

[*GREASER*]

Last night I tryed grinding the paprika with a spoon on a plate. It worked perfectly and now it sticks to the flys with no problem. Im going to check the indian store soon and see if they have some of the real deal that is even stronger then the stuff at the market. I wonder if saffron would work better then paprika. I know its very strong but also very expensive. If you arent familiar with saffron it is the stamina from a safron flower. Its used in cooking alot to give things bright red and yellowish colors.