MY WAY

Currently I am breeding D. auratus and D leucomelas and have just begun to get some results from a group of D. azureus which my wife and I bought at the Barmveld frog show in Holland as babies in March 99. To give myself a chance of getting males & females I bought 4 D. azureus, which have turned out to be three males and one female, & 4 D. tinctorius citronella. The first calling was heard on 13th October 1999, just a faint buzzing compared to the loud, raucous trills from 2 tanks of competing D. leucomelas. Initially I separated the azureus to two pairs keeping the buzzing male with the probable female, identified by being slightly plumper but also as the only one not to have white toe tips, (is this a chance occurrence?). By the 30th January I had three calling males so I put them all back together as the original pairing had not produced any results. On the 1st Feb. we were rewarded with a clutch of 9 eggs, which looked good except that some were showing a lot of white on top. By the 8'" Feb there were 4 very small tadpoles within the eggs although the rest looked mouldy and a couple of days later there were a few strands of white cobweb-like film starting to spread across the surface of the water. The eggs had been removed from the vivarium on a plastic leaf in a coffee jar lid and the leaf transferred to a small container, placed on a piece of foam with water added to the base of the eggs and kept in a separate incubator. I removed the bad eggs and as much as possible of the film. By the 19th there were 4 free-swimming tadpoles, which were separated into individual pots. Unfortunately learned the hard way that D. azureus tadpoles are much more lively than D. auratus and I lost one that jumped out of its pot. By the 6th May we had our first 3 baby azureus that are doing well. In the meantime we have had a further 10 clutches of eggs varying in size from 6 eggs to 10 and in quality from 7 eggs producing I tadpole to 10 eggs producing 10 tadpoles.

We have had no joy as yet with the citronella although I have seen one frog calling, a very faint buzz only noticeable by the body movement, and not heard outside the tank.

We also have a group of 5 P. bicolor, which we bought at the Watford show in May '99. These have been producing plenty of very small eggs but with none yet viable. All of our frogs are kept in 500/500/500 vivaria with a fluorescent tube for heat and light. They are sprayed daily and fed on micro crickets and fruit flies dusted with Nutrobal and when available, greenfly & blackfly. The tadpoles are all raised in individual pots which are changed and washed every day and fed exclusively on King British tropical fish flake. Hatchling frogs are fed day old micro crickets until big enough to take the usual week old. All boxes of crickets are given a small slice of orange and bran to keep them going for up to a week. As a warning to others, I introduced three tiny day geckos that had arrived in a consignment of bananas to the baby frog tank. Over the next few months I noticed the disappearance of quite a few baby frogs, including 8 D. leucomelas. Initially I refused to believe that the geckos were responsible but have now decided there is no other explanation.
KEN MANN Newport, Gwent