Fear of Clowns

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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As eBay prohibits the sale of live animals, my new brainchild Poison Dart Frog Auctions allows buyers and sellers to do just that: buy and sell poison dart frogs.

Labels: eBay, pets, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/01/2008 02:58:00 PM
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The eggs hatched today. As D. auratus tadpoles are cannibalistic, it's best to keep them in separate containers.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 6/07/2008 08:16:00 PM
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Today, I picked up my first frogs from Brian, a breeder in Wisconsin. They are green and black poison dart frogs, actually better known by their scientific name, Dendrobates auratus. Within the frogger hobby, this morph - or variation within a species - is called "turquoise and tan".

At this stage they can't be sexed. I got 5 total, which gives me a 94% chance of having at least one breeding pair. This morph is somewhat variable - note the frog on the right is bluer than the others.

Brian also threw in three auratus eggs.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 5/31/2008 07:06:00 PM
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I learned how to do this here, so just a quick walk around the cricket ranch.

Here's the feeding trough. They're eating cat food and powdered milk. As soon as I placed the lid full of food in the ranch, they started carrying off whole nuggets a third their size and greater in weight.

Crickets are pretty stupid and will drown themselves in any available open water so you have to give them something to suck on.

The egg cartons are just for them to crawl around on and hide under.

The small tub of soil is for the lady crickets to lay their eggs in. The broods arising from the small incubator will carry on the colony. As per the baby crickets born of the large incubator ... well, I'm not going to do anything Pol Pot didn't do, but I won't do it as efficiently and on a much smaller scale.

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

// posted by Erik @ 5/28/2008 06:03:00 PM
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Ken is your guy.

Labels: pets

// posted by Erik @ 5/19/2008 03:10:00 PM
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