# Isopods for faster pumilio growth?



## phender (Jan 9, 2009)

I was wondering if anyone feeds isopods directly to their baby pumilio and if so do you notice accelerated growth?

I usually feed my freshly ootw pumilio a few varieties of springtails. At 3 months they are usually not big enough to sell. This time around I dumped purple, white and striped dwarf isos in the containers (I have to pull my babies because mom abuses them) and added more every week.

This time around, at 3 months the babies are almost adult size!
Here are a couple pics. They are from two different sets of parents. I pulled the other one as a tad a couple days before it sprouted front legs because the brom leaf it was growing in fell off, so I know it wasn't sitting around in the viv for any length of time before I found it.

This is from my red pair









This is from my "Cemetery" pair.









The "Dart" logo on the bottom of the cup is 20mm long, so they are pretty close to adult size. Anyone else have their bastis grow this fast?

ps. No, I don't need homes for these guys, so please don't pm me.


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## GP dynamite (Feb 19, 2013)

Nice job. Very healthy looking frogs.


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## Spaff (Jan 8, 2011)

Phil, what are the SVL on your adults? 20mm is huge for 3 months oow!


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## phender (Jan 9, 2009)

Spaff said:


> Phil, what are the SVL on your adults? 20mm is huge for 3 months oow!


You know, I don't know exactly. The book I have says adults are 20-21mm. Mine look a little bigger than the babies I have pictured, but not much.

You will have to excuse me if I don't want to try to catch them to find out.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

well another factor that you might not be considering is how big they morph out based on teh broms you use and the amount of water the axils hold, the more water they hold the bigger the froglets, i use broms that hold fairly big axils and hold a lot of water and they morph out 1/3 the size of the parents and will be adult size at 3 months and calling at 4, i have isos in teh tanks so not sure if they munch on them or not.


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## phender (Jan 9, 2009)

Julio said:


> well another factor that you might not be considering is how big they morph out based on teh broms you use and the amount of water the axils hold, the more water they hold the bigger the froglets, i use broms that hold fairly big axils and hold a lot of water and they morph out 1/3 the size of the parents and will be adult size at 3 months and calling at 4, i have isos in teh tanks so not sure if they munch on them or not.


OK, so it is not totally unusual for babies to be adult size in 3 months. Thank you. I have no evidence that my babies are eating isos, but I know I dumped a lot in the container initially and once I noticed the accelerated growth, I decided to keep adding isos when I added more springtails. It may be a total coincidence. That is why I am asking about how quickly pumilios grow for other people and if they have noticed if including isos makes a difference.

In my case, the size of the axials hasn't changed from when my babies were growing slower, so I don't suspect it is a factor in my case. The morph out size seemed the same.


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## stu&shaz (Nov 19, 2009)

Phil this thread is fascinating to me,as is Julio's response thank you(both) for sharing this,it has given me much to think about. When you are feeding iso, are you putting in both adults and young iso or just young dwarf woodlice? 

Phil your red pr offspring pictured is notably heavier than the froglet from the basti pr,any reasons you could pinpoint for me? Finally both look stunning,frogs that could grace any collection

regards

Stu


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## phender (Jan 9, 2009)

Hi Stu,

Thanks for the compliments. I think the pictures are a little deceiving for a couple reasons. You can obviously can tell that the pic of the red baby is closer than the pic of the orange one. What you can't tell is that the red one is sort of sitting back into its legs to look fatter. The other thing is, those black stripes on the sides of the orange one are very slimming. 

I took another picture of them together this time. The camera is a little closer to the orange frog than the red one, but you can see that they are pretty equal. The little bit of sphagnum on the orange baby covering its side stripe diminishes the illusion that it is thinner. In this pic the orange one may look a little longer and more robust, but like I said the camera is closer to the orange one.









To answer your question, I try to keep them in the same conditions. In this case they are even in the exact same type/size of container. My two pairs are kind of in the same rhythm and these two were ootw on basically the same day.


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## rigel10 (Jun 1, 2012)

Very nice and unusually big froglet! 

Thanks Julio for your usefull post.


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## stu&shaz (Nov 19, 2009)

Hi Phil,
thank you for the reply,damn I even got an extra picture of the little corkers,can't be bad. Phil one unanswered question are you feeding adult and young iso.Sorry to be a pain,but it's always worth chasing down these answers,from folks producing froglets that look like your's do Cheers for taking the time to go through this for me,a graphic illustration of how deceptive photographs can be
kind regards

Stu


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## sports_doc (Nov 15, 2004)

Julio said:


> well another factor that you might not be considering is how big they morph out based on teh broms you use and the amount of water the axils hold, the more water they hold the bigger the froglets, i use broms that hold fairly big axils and hold a lot of water and they morph out 1/3 the size of the parents and will be adult size at 3 months and calling at 4, i have isos in teh tanks so not sure if they munch on them or not.



Julio is right. As usual.

Also, if they feed 4-5 froglets they will be smaller then if only 1-2 morph from the female. Sometimes dramatically so....like 2x the size difference.

I also find that if the parents have froglets in the tank already, the 'second' batch are almost always smaller than the first. ? competition stress is my guess.

some thoughts!

Way to go BTW.

I should have a dozen Basti to bring to frog day, to pair up with others to make nice groups...so keep em coming.


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## phender (Jan 9, 2009)

stu&shaz said:


> Hi Phil,
> ......Phil one unanswered question are you feeding adult and young iso.Sorry to be a pain,but it's always worth chasing down these answers,from folks producing froglets that look like your's do ........
> Stu





sports_doc said:


> Julio is right. As usual.
> 
> Also, if they feed 4-5 froglets they will be smaller then if only 1-2 morph from the female. Sometimes dramatically so....like 2x the size difference.
> 
> ...


Let me see if I can respond to both of these at the same time. 

First thanks to you both.
Both vivariums are seeded with Isos and the population seems pretty high in both tanks. However, this has always been the case and this is about the 4th or 5th batch of babies from both parents. Both sets always raise 2 babies and new ones pop out every 2 months like clockwork (except in the winter). Mancreeks I let grow up in the parent's tank, but I usually pull my bastis because the parents are a bit hard on the babies even though the basti tanks are a lot bigger than the mancreek tank.
The factors that Shawn and Julio mentioned are very helpful, but in this case, those factors have remained constant over the course of these pairs breeding history. 

I just pulled another batch of babies from both tanks around the first of the month. We will see if they grow as fast as the previous group or if their growth is more like my previous groups.

Thanks for the responses. I welcome more input as to what else my have caused the more rapid growth. I have consider higher temperature, but I have no way to make that comparison other than my recollection that my frog room seems to get up to 81 during the day and down to 72 at night pretty constantly though out the year.


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