# Terribilis egg incubation setup



## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

I described this technique that I figured out in another thread but thought I would post it and a couple of photos separately in case someone down the line is searching for terribilis egg care.

I like many other frog hobbyists have struggled with terribilis (in this case my orange terrbilis) laying fertile eggs only to have those clutches go bad after a few days. The eggs begin to develop and then begin to degenerate and mold over. At first I chalked the problem up to young parents. None of the approaches that I tried seemed to make a difference (methylene blue, tadpole tea, excluding external light, leaving the eggs in the viv). If I was lucky, I might get a single tadpole out of an entire clutch though oftentimes the result was zero tads.

Not really having anything better to do I decided to try an experiment where I would pull the eggs and while I would put them in an environment that provided humidity, I would leave them alone. The general idea is shown below...










Basically the covered petri dish has been placed in a 16 oz. deli cup containing moist long fiber sphagnum. No additional water via misting or other addition is placed into the petri dish. A thin film of water from the parents 'watering' the eggs is present though. The deli cup is ventilated with holes as seen in the photograph. No misting or other manipulation of the eggs is involved as even infertile eggs are left in place.

When the first tadpole begins to emerge from the egg I flood the dish to a depth of a few mm of water as seen in this photo. 










To give you an idea of how things have changed, for the clutch shown above, the parents laid 15 eggs. 4 of those eggs were clearly infertile after 2 days and went bad immediately. However the remaining 11 eggs continued to develop and as you can see are either well along in development or already hatched. Previous clutches handled this way have produced robust tads that are developing nicely. 

So perhaps a little trick to try if you are having problems with terriblis eggs or other ones going bad. I realize this isn't like rocket science but it went against my instinct to not even mist the eggs...but the outcome is clearly superior...at least in my case. I did an experiment where I set up the eggs the same way but misted every other day and only 50% of the good eggs made it to the end. So the lack of intervention paid off.

Bill


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## sports_doc (Nov 15, 2004)

I'll chime in on my experience with "Bill's Way"

2 clutches from the Yellow Terribs last month. in total 18 eggs, 8 bad from the start (most from one clutch so may have been infertile), 7/10 made it into the water. 

Not bad considering I usually count on only 2-3 eggs making it.

I'll have 2 more clutches going into the BEPI set up (Bill's Excellent Petridish Incubator) :wink: later this week (I generally keep them in with the parents for 4-5 days or so)










See you at FD Bill....

S


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## Homer (Feb 15, 2004)

I use a very similar method for incubating all my eggs. The only difference between Bill's method and mine is the fact that I actually float my petri dish on a layer of water in the 16 oz. deli cup. I don't use sphagnum, and I don't punch holes in the lid. I simply place the lid on loosely. It makes a difference in my ability to get eggs from my Brazil Cobalts all the way to hatching, as these tend to be touchy eggs for me.


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## Imperialterrib (Sep 3, 2013)

For my method I keep my terribilis eggs in a humid tank full of spaghnum moss with a clay ball drainage layer and I mist for about 40 seconds every day to keep the tank humid. I will try this method mentioned in the future though.


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