Mantella expectata

Dean James

Photos of M. aurantiaca by J. Skillcorn
Last update: 17 August, 2002

The article from Derek Petrie in June 1997’s Newsletter, Frogs in Atlanta was of special interest to me, as though I don’t keep Dendrobatid frogs, I do keep Mantellas: MM. aurantiaca and expectata to be precise.

I used to house them together in a 36" x 24" x 18" (90 x 60 x 45 cms) deep tank with a similar set-up to the Atlanta ones. The main difference was that my lighting was one 20W Powerglo and one 20W Growlux tube, and my stream fed into a six inches wide by four inches deep (15 x 8 cms) pool running the entire front length of the set-up. The tank had a submersible heater/stat as used in tropical fish tanks. This was set at 72°F, although being in a heated room this rarely was activated. Also the ends of the front of my tank had an inch-wide mesh running part of the way down each side to allow for good ventilation.

The back and sides of the tank were covered in polystyrene tiles, faced with natural cork floor tiles. This was then hung with cork bark planted with orchids and bromeliads, tied in with moss and leaf mould. A few branches planted in a similar manner went from floor to roof. However, one drawback was in feeding the frogs small crickets, as they recycled the orchid plants into a rather expensive frog food! Over a period of time the floor was covered with bark chippings, leaf mould and moss, with differing levels created with stones, logs etc.

At first, all went well, except that M. expectata proved to be very shy. They spent most of the time out of sight within either the entire length of the stream area, or up along the top of the tank. M. aurantiaca proved to be, and still are, more visible.

The first spawning happened during the July of 1996, with another in the August. This was within about ten months of obtaining M. expectata and a year of M. aurantiaca. On metamorphosis, the froglets appeared to be bronze and very small. They were fed on mites which were cultured on banana skins (they originally arrived in a fruit fly culture) but as the weather was turning for the worse - it was by now October or November - not a lot of the youngsters survived. It was either that, or cannibalism is common among Mantellas.

I found that it was a mistake to feed the tadpoles on algae flakes as prepared and sold for tropical fish. They grew well, but at the appearance of the front legs, the rear ones in 90% of the tadpoles stiffened into a horizontal position. I blame the flake food, as I used the remainder on a batch of common frog tadpoles this year and the first few to metamorphose suffered the same effects. This has never happened before, nor have this year’s Mantella tadpoles been affected in any way. However, this time I removed the tadpoles to a separate aerated tank, as last year’s crop appeared to be crossbred. I decided to split the frogs into two separate groups, but on starting to dismantle the set-up I found 40 new tadpoles.

These are now lovely little frogs, but again appear to be hybrids. Those from last year appear very like the brown Mantella M. betsilio. Whether this is actually a cross I don’t know. I did think they could be M. crocea, but Marc Staniszewski (who wrote the excellent Mantella article in June’s issue of Reptile Hobbyist) said that due to the different geographic locations of M. crocea in the wild, this wouldn’t be possible. Maybe, then, M. betsilio, if it occurs in the same regions as MM. aurantiaca/expectata, is a cross in its own right.

My problem now is: what do I do with twenty or so nice, cute-looking but unidentified frogs?

July 1998