VISIT TO SWEDEN
Mick Bajcar
Observant readers may have noticed that the two speakers at the recent Swedish Frogday at the Natural History Museum in Stockholm were BDG member Kris Hermanns from Belgium and myself.  We were guests of the SDS in general but more particularly of their Newsletter Editor Lars 'The gadget man' Österdahl and his Wife Elisabet.  Having met Lars at Weibersbrunn some years ago and "talked" to him regularly on the net I was looking forward to seeing some of the gadgets described on the SDS website.

Lars keeps a large number of frogs in his lounge, the majority of which are in the sloping-front vivaria described in his website.  He currently maintains D. azureus, D. auratus, D. leucomelas, D. galactonotus, D. lamasi, D. imitator, P. vittatus, and E. tricolor plus a few non-dendrobatid species (including a breeding group of Pipa parva).

With so many frogs he has to be organised with live foods and breeds large numbers of Drosophila on a standard mix with the cultures all maintained in a wine rack at an angle to allow the escape of C02.  Lars cultures springtails with a method remarkably similar to that described by Bob Worthington in this issue.  He cultures aphids on peas, which produce vast amounts of live food and is culturing ants (Leptothorax) but whilst these cultures are surviving they are not providing sufficient ants to provide a viable food source.  Lars is known for his gadgetry and for finding solutions to difficult problems.  I am sure he will solve this one eventually.  Many of his frogs are breeding but he is having limited success with three breeding groups of D. azureus.  One group is now being subjected to a regime of UV light with the others acting as a control.

The results of this experiment should be interesting.  All tadpoles are maintained in glass jars that are well lit to encourage the growth of algae.  They are fed on flake food, daphnia and a weekly schnitzel, a piece of earthworm.  Lars avoids the use of plastics, as he is worried about the effects of the chemicals in them.  Further co-operation with the SDS is planned and we will be featuring some of Lars' gadgets in future issues.

Further details can be found at http://user.tninet.se/ frog keeping/

The PowerPoint presentation by Kris with recordings of the frog calls was fascinating and I hope that Kris will contribute more on this subject for the Newsletter in the near future.  Kris, Amanda and I would like to thank Lars, Elisabet and their family for their tremendous hospitality on our visit.  It was also good to meet SDS members, many of whom are also members of the BDG.  The behind-the-scenes visit to the Natural History museum, arranged by Lars, and seeing some of the Linnaean collection was a fascinating experience.