# Tadpole survival rate?



## themann42

my g/f and i had 6 good eggs from dwarf tincs that made it to the tad stage. we now only have 1 left after about 3 weeks of being tadpoles. i was wondering if this sort of this is common or if it's likely our care methods that lead to this and we need to figure out what we did wrong. we have 6 more eggs developing and want to make sure we do things right.


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## Dancing frogs

I am guessing you transfer them to cups too fast or feed them too soon.
In my experience, they have a better survival rate if you wait till the tads are active (hold themselves upright instead of on their side, swim when disturbed etc).
Also with some if you feed too soon they can develop mouth fungus (or whatever it is) you can see that starting if you catch it soon enough...looks like fuzz on their lips.
An oak leaf in the cups really loads the water with tannins and will help, also if you can set up the cups a few days in advance the water will stabilize some and start that yummy bacterial growth that tads love to munch on.
Otherwise, sometimes the tads are just too weak to make it after hatching, then you might want to consider the parent's diet/husbandry.


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## JL-Exotics

Sorry to hijack this thread, I'd like to take this a step further...

It seems I rarely get an entire clutch from egg to tadpole to frog.

I'm curious as to what kind of success rate people are getting. I know I can't be the only one with a spreadsheet that keeps track of these details...

My vents generally hit about 95% for fertilizing eggs, but less than 50% are hatching into healthy tadpoles.

My younger azureus pairs also appear to fertilize most eggs, but few survive more than a couple days. They have about a 4% hatch rate. I have a more mature pair that have nearly a 70% hatch rate.

I don't want to start a debate on supplementing, or feeder variety, or husbandry... but I'm curious as to the success rates other folks are having. Is a 50% hatch rate a reasonable goal? Is 100% consistently achievable? 

My question is: What species are you working with and what are your hatch rates?


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## kyle1745

There are so many factors that come into play... Ill try to list a few...

1. Age of the parents can be a issue, as very young parents in my experience can though so so eggs for some time, which then equal so so tads.

2. Supplementation of the parents... with high quality supplements. (careful to watch the expiration dates)

3. care of the eggs, some like it wet some do not and it can be tricky finding what works best.

4. WATER QUALITY, for the eggs, and tads. People have success with many things, but again the key is to find what works for you. You can try Spring, distilled, RO, aged tap, aged tap with tad pole tea... etc... etc... I am currently using remineralized RO with good success.

5. Tadpole food, I've made a number of posts on this and in my experience it has made the biggest difference for me. I prefer tadpole bites, dried brine, or dried blood worms to the standard algae mixes, and mainly feed tadpole bites.

6. Water changes, how often and etc... I change my tadpole water twice a week and then feed. Again this is what has worked for me...

Hope that gives you some ideas...


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## elmoisfive

JL-Exotics said:


> I don't want to start a debate on supplementing, or feeder variety, or husbandry... but I'm curious as to the success rates other folks are having. Is a 50% hatch rate a reasonable goal? Is 100% consistently achievable?
> 
> My question is: What species are you working with and what are your hatch rates?


I see anywhere from close to 100% success (azureiventris, trivittatus) to less than 10% (my orange terribilis were producing only one viable tad per clutch...now it's up to 3...wooo hooo).

With a few exceptions, I find I go from 'bust' to 'boom' where at first I fret over poor egg viability, etc. to "Oh My God" how am I going to slow these frogs down :shock: To date I've been overrun with tricolors, vents, lamasi, leucs, trivittatus, auratus and the list goes on....

To Kyle's point, you figure out what works best for a given frog couple or group and then it seems like smooth sailing. There have been a few frogs like the azureiventris where everything worked well from the beginning but most require a little work (or in a few cases more work than I care to admit) to figure out how to optimize the situation.

Bill


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## Roadrunner

You forgot temps of the parents and eggs. on the hi 70`s end i get very few good eggs or tads from my phyllos. on the other hand my vittatus and green and blacks were near 100% success. my reginas will produce 1 or 2 100% clutches and then produce a half clutch and a dud clutch then back to 100%. 
truth is i have a lot of theories but i can`t provide the right temps for everyone or the specific diet to get 100% from everyone. I produce enough w/ all i have and i don`t try and nurse anything along. either it makes it or it doesn`t. i do experiment though and have had some tads do ok w/out feeding after they got a gas bubble or have tried to lower temps to see if there would be any change. now that i`m not collecting clutches i see better hatch rates w/ some but mostly not. seems that keeping them clean and removing dead flies and stuff gets better hatches but i`m sure they wouldn`t be the strongest tads anyway.
it`s all part of the learning curve.
when i started i was feeding mostly termites and was loosing over 300 eggs a month. i think it was from obesity since there are links to low sperm count and obesity.


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## melissa68

*We have the same experiences*

There are so many variables that go into survival rates of your eggs and tads. But I will give you a couple words of encouragement. 

If these are your first eggs/tads, what you learn from these, you will be able to apply to future clutches. All of us have gone through this learning curve. Even thought all the different variables might seem overwhelming, you will get things down and get better survival rates.

I think one of the biggest problems we had with loosing tads was transferring them and feeding them too early. Remember, they will continue to feed off their yoke for a few days after hatching. I began to toss in a few strands of moss for them to chew on in case they began to eat before I put any food in their dish. 

Melissa


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## kyle1745

Thats Aaron for brining up the temps... I meant to included that one.


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