Fear of Clowns

From the banded leucs,

Labels: pets, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 4/17/2009 03:26:00 PM
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My Brazilian yellow heads are approximately 10 months out of the water. The front toe pads on the rightmost one, below, shows he's definitely a male. At least one BYH has been calling for a few weeks now. It's too early to tell the sex the rest although I'd guess they're all girls. Maybe not the one right next to the guy.

My west coast Panamanian auratus raised from eggs I purchased. They're seven moths out of the water. One of the really green ones is much more turquoise now, but the blue one is still awesomely blue!

Labels: pets, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 3/31/2009 08:14:00 PM
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D. leucomelas tadploles, a few minutes after emerging from their eggs followed by the clutch after I trimmed the leaf it was on.

Common names for this species are yellow and black poison frog and bumblebee poison frog. This is the "banded" morph from British Guyana. From what I read this morph is a finickier breeder in captivity than the non-banded morph from Venezuela. The non-banded morph has black spotting in the yellow areas.

Two of the 2.1 trio of parents are pictured below. These are from the first clutch of eggs - at least the first clutch I found. It typically takes young adult dart frogs a few clutches before they "get it right" - the first few tries commonly produce infertile eggs or if they are fertilized, the tadpoles don't develop normally.

Yesterday, I found three freshly laid eggs under their coco hut. Today, I dug around to see if there was another clutch and discovered one on a leaf outside the coco hut with four well developed tadpoles - three of which came out of their eggs just minutes after I sprayed them with water.

Here are the freshly laid eggs and a shot of one of the tadpoles after hatching.

Labels: pets, poison dart frogs. tadpoles

// posted by Erik @ 3/24/2009 06:08:00 PM
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This D. auratus morph is from around Campana, Panama - on the eastern coast. It's unknown whether it exists in the wild any more - its habitat has been extensively developed since it entered the hobby.

I got six of them from Amanda last Friday. They are juveniles, about 3/4" from snout to vent.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 12/23/2008 11:52:00 AM
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Close up of a Brazilian Yellow Head D. tinctorius. They are about an inch or perhaps a little more long.

Close up of a green and bronze D. auratus - the black is turning notably more bronze every few weeks.

The D. azureus lovers. Still no fertile eggs. Maybe they'd feel more amorous if they didn't ust crap where ever they happen to be.

Sad news: I moved my 4 near-adult leucomelas to a new vivarium today and discovered one has escaped! Judging from their reactions to a recorded call I believed I had two males; I haven't heard a call in a week or more. I either had one male - the escapee - or hopefully the remaining male no longer feels compelled to call. I've read leucs have two calls: one territorial that mostly occurs an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset and another call to woo females that occurs whenever they feel so moved. Indeed, the vast majority of calls I've heard have been between and hour and two after lights on, so I'm hopeful once they're sexually mature I'll get some fertile eggs. I moved my juvenile banded leuc in with the remaining three. The old, unplanted viv:

Anyway, the viv would have been escape-proof if the guy at FCA would have made and shipped my custom tops by now. I paid him in full - including shipping costs - on October 13. Everyone who keeps aquarium animals knows how it feels to lose a pet due to human error; I did take a risk by ordering the tops at the time when they shipped, but like, he said he'd ship the tops in two or three weeks. It's been ten.

UPDATE 12/24 11:45 AM. I still have a boy! My ears are plugged with a cold and the pipes in the building can actually sort of sound like a leuc call, but after wondering if I was just hearing what I wanted to hear for the last few hours, I finally and conclusively heard a call with my ear right up to the vivarium. There's still a boy, fantastic.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 12/23/2008 11:46:00 AM
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I took my auratus from eggs out of their viv and built a naked pyramid to photograph.

Labels: Bush White House, iraq, pets, photos, poison dart frogs, war

// posted by Erik @ 11/18/2008 04:56:00 PM
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Banded leucomelas. The Latin name means "white and black", which this species obviously isn't.

The toes on my Brazilian yellow head tinctorius are growing. In males, the front toe pads are larger than the back ones. In females, the difference is not so great. Boys here?

This one is noticeably larger than the others, yet the toe pads aren't that broad. Females of this species are larger. Girl?

In this picture, it appears this one has a deeper body, another female characteristic. Or maybe it's just fat. Or maybe the camera angle. A split of 3 males and two females is perfect, as the females must be housed separately. 3:2 would give me a breeding trio to keep and breeding pair to sell.

The azureus pair. Still no good eggs.

An adult Pacific coast Panamanian auratus, also known as "green and bronze" or "turquoise and bronze". Here, in this photo, I can see the black markings beginning to turn tannish bronze as happens in adults.

A juvenile Pacific coast Panamanian auratus, notably greener. These frogs were mass imported in the years 2002-2004 - most died. The offspring - within a single clutch - vary from bright green through turquoise to bright blue, even brown sometimes as well as albino. (auratus means "gold" in Latin - there are no gold markings in any morph of this species. Go figure). Some lines have been selectively bred to emphasize a particular color and there is some controversy within the hobby whether different lines established from the same mass imports should be considered all the same morph or separate morphs.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 11/17/2008 09:49:00 AM
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Today I received five Brazilian yellowheads, a beautiful D. tinctorius morph. Pictures don't completely convey the brilliance of their metallic coloring.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 8/14/2008 08:20:00 PM
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Three of my four new banded D. leucomelas froglets. They are about two months out of the water (meaning two months since they morphed from tadpoles to froglets). They're really tiny.

Sexed pair of adult/sub adult D. azureus. The males are smaller and have broader toe pads.

Sterilizing wood for the vivariums. I had it in a 225° F oven for 3 1/2 or four hours.

Sterilizing live oak leaves for the vivariums. boiled in R/O water for about a half hour.

Here are the plants I've collected so far for my four frog vivariums. As you have to throw out plants that have been exposed to frogs with parasites, I'm waiting until I test the frogs fecals before planting them in with the frogs.

The azureus have not yet figured out they can jump into the petri dish and chow down ... both repeatedly try to nab crickets through the plastic.

The last few seconds of a cricket's life.

Labels: pet food, pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/20/2008 08:52:00 PM
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One out of the five D. leucomelas I received today didn't survive shipping.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/17/2008 09:41:00 PM
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Bought a PowerShot DS1100 IS.

The water fountain at work,

A drain in the bathroom at work,

Diet Dr. Pepper at work,

Bird splat in the skyway,

Dinner at Tao Foods,

My D. auratus, scared into a corner,

My D. imitator,

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/14/2008 07:41:00 PM
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Flightless fruit flies are the staple food for most captive dart frogs; I've so far been more successfull with other feeder insects. My cricket ranch is producing hundreds of pinhead crickets.

This is the bedding I removed from the main colony - it's now in a 6 quart Seralite container with some dry catfood, powdered milk and damp sphagnum moss. What else could a baby cricket need?

By the way, I'm watching Dave Letterman interview a very drunk Jack Black at the moment.

I'm not exactly sure what these are - I've read them referred to as bean beetles and bean weevils. They're amazingly easy to culture - all they need is dry black-eyed-peas. No water, no anything else. There were 8 or a dozen individuals in my starter culture - all dead for weeks now. Three days ago, a single beetle emerged, yesterday two dozen, today swarms. I split the "used" beans into two new cultures and added fresh beans to the original culture.

They must emerge from the beans sexually mature as all they do is crawl around and mate with each other.

Here I have a mixture of vermiculite, small pebbles and LECA. On top I've layered damp corrugated cardboard. This is a culture of isopods - similar to pill bugs, rolly-pollies and woodlice - the things that roll up or scatter when you lift up something that hasn't been lifted up in a while. They are all isopods.

This page and video was really helpful to me. Not sure what to try for food, I'm giving them a smorgasbord: watermelon rind, banana peel, yeast, oatmeal and a tortilla.

Covered with a final layer of cardboard as these are the things you see when lifting up something that hasn't been lifted up in a while.

Springtails - another animal you'll only see when looking under things. I'm using charcoal as a medium as their buoyancy allows one to harvest them by flooding the container and scooping a mass of them off the top of the water.

Food for the springtails: yeast and oatmeal.

For my tadpoles, bloodworms. Purchased frozen from a pet store.

I moved my tads to larger containers.

I killed two of my three turquoise and bronze and auratus tadpoles by using straight reverse osmosis water. By osmosis, the mineral free water sucks minerals and salts out of the tadpole. Here is the single turquoise and bronze that made it - you can see its eyes here.

Finally, some food for the human.

Labels: diy, pet food, pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/01/2008 08:58:00 PM
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