Whoooo Hooooo!!! UPDATE

A good general rule to do with eggs is leave them in the tank 48-72 hours after they are discovered, and not disturb them (this is to make sure the frogs get a chance to definately fertilize them). After this point you can check on the eggs and should be able to tell if they are developing or not. You might want to brush up on your tadpole stages just so you know what they are suppose to look like!

Check this page out for imitator tadpole development:
http://natures-web.org/fg/dev/imit.htm

I find the first couple stages to be a bit hard to tell sometimes when you are really just getting started, especially with white-egged species like imitators (are they bad or are they good? you can't go by color). In the first stages, unless you have a microscope or disection-scope you probibly won't see much, but if you see this:
http://natures-web.org/fg/dev/imgs/imit/stg19.htm
Its probibly safe to say your eggs are good! :lol:

There are a couple of other reasons to keep the tads in the tank until
its safe to say they are indeed fertile. The parents usually do a really great job of incubating them (keeping them moist) and there is evidence that having the adults take care of the eggs and have them carry the tadpole to a deposition site reduces fungal problems in these stages, even in captive animals. I heard this before I bred my first frogs, so I've let all my frogs care for their own eggs and carry their tads to ponds in the tank, where I collected the tadpoles.

As I've concentrated more on thumbnails, this led me to rig up an interesting way of getting tadpoles out of bromeliads... it basically involved the broms being mounted on a peice of cage furniture that i could remove from the tank, flush out the entire brom into a contianer, then take whatever tads I found and put them into the containers I'd raise them in. I did this every couple of weeks with EVERY brom (whether I saw a tad in it or not) and often found tads I didn't know were there. Then I got lazy and just let them take care of them all.

I don't know what your goal of taking them out is (just how cool it is to raise tads or if you are looking to get as many froglets as you can for whatever reason) but many times its just easier to let the parents do the work. The thing with letting parents do most of the work is that they lay less clutches and produce less tadpoles (even less froglets if you let them raise up the tads to froglets) but I also think that the parents stay healthier this way since they aren't constantly laying and laying and laying...

Thanks!

Thanks for the input, everyone! I appreciate it. The reason I want to take them out is twofold. First, they were unsexed and I bought them as froglets, so I had them in a "temporary" tank and they have not yet been switched into their more permanent home. So, this tank does not have any broms in it. So, there is no real water source since I didn't have this set up as a breeding tank. I mist a few times a day. Secondly, since it's a good possibility that they are infertile (their first clutch that I know of), I would like to remove them ASAP so they get on to bigger and better stuff (i.e. laying more eggs). That's a question...how long does it take the frogs to figure out that the eggs are infertile? (if indeed they are) I assume they would care for them as if they are fertile until they go bad?

Ok...there is one other selfish reason...*I* want to watch them develop (if they are fertile) and learn what it all looks like if they do go bad. I only hope that I get many eggs from my frogs in the future that I will be able to let them raise them and enjoy watching their behavior.

So, where should I go from here if I am going to take them out? I've read so many things that contradict each other, so again, I'd love input from you guys!

Thanks!

Kristen

Well...

I think they are good! Either that or they all burst at the same time and the same places...and they coincidentally look like a little spinal cord growth on one side of the egg. I'm trying to take pictures, but my digital camera is having trouble with the close ups.

So, I took them out because I had to cut the film canister to get a better look. I could see *something* happened and I suspected they were going bad and just burst. However, when I cut the top off to get a better look, I found three eggs that look like they're developing...yippeeeee!

I put them in a gladware container, poked a few small pinholes in it and put a moist paper towel in the bottom. Then, I put the entire film canister in there about at the angle that it was in the tank.

Anything else that I need to do? What temperature room do they need to be in?

Thanks so much...and I'm still trying to get good pictures.

Kristen