# Tads and water changes



## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Hey, so over the last several weeks i been experimenting and keeping better notes, i never kept notes. 
I maged to get 4 lamasi tads to come out of the egg at around the same time. All 4 tads were fed the same thing, naturose and same portion and kept at the same temp (78). All tads are 6 weeks out of the egg. 

This is not a bashing thread just here to share my results. I know there a lot of people out there that don't do water changes or very little or just top off as they get evaporation, whatever works for you, keep doing what you are doing. 

Here is a pic of the tads in dixie cups. 











Here is the biggest tad which got a daily water change. 









Here is the second which got a water change everyother day. 









The third got a weekly water change. 










and the fourth got a water change every 2 weeks.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

dont know how that smily face got there, but that is supposed to be an 8.


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## evolvstll (Feb 17, 2007)

What type of water did you use? Black water extract? Indian almond leaves? I have only kept tinc and luec tads. I keep my tad water at about 72. I found warmer water allowed the tads to morph faster, tended to have problems more often like sls.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

I use RO water, i really didn't get much SLS when raising tads at a warmer temp, but pretty much the same, atleast for me


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## Corpus Callosum (Apr 7, 2007)

Do you have more eggs to mess around with? Here's what you should do for the next round 
- from the entire group, divide them into different water types with straight RO water, RO + indian almond leaves, RO + black water extract, dechlorinated tap water, tap water + indian almond leaves, tap water + black water extract, and any other water types you might want to try
- from the group that doesn't get water changes, do some without anything, and some with riccia, java moss, duckweed, and other fast growing aquatic plants.

Got some more variables I'd like to see but we'll leave that for round 3 !


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Hey Mike,
i do have some more tads to play with, but that will have to wait since i am going out of town for a few days til next week and then going out of town again til the following week... As soon as i get more time i will do some more experimentation.


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## zBrinks (Jul 16, 2006)

Id do much more experimentation with water changes and straight R/O water before going into other variables. 4 is hardly a representative sample.

Im willing to try the same thing with leuc tads that should be hatching out in about two weeks.


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## defaced (May 23, 2005)

I'm going to botch the terminology in this post. Stats was not my strong suite but I remember the fundamentals. 

A completely agree with Zach, you need a significantly larger sample size before you even begin to draw conclusions. I would guess you're looking at probably forty times what you currently have because you need a reasonable population to support each variable - at a minimum. Simply put, your big tad could be an outlier - but you won't know that until you have more data to compare your results against. 

The other thing you need to determine is how you're going to measure the size of the tad. Length, mass, girth? Also when and how often are you going to measure these tads. You may find that some grow quickly to start then slow down, while others do the converse.

I _think_ this is the formula you need:
n >= ((Za)^2) * (s/d)^2
http://talkstats.com/showthread.php?t=201


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## Otis (Apr 16, 2006)

you need WAY more frogs to compare.


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

Yeah, I think you really need more trials to conclude that the one tad isn't just farther ahead or faster growing. I may be off, but to me it looks like the other three are pretty close to the same size and the daily water change tad is quite a bit bigger. That being the case (if it is), then I would lean more towards individual variation in the daily tad than it being an issue with the water changes, but you never know. This would definitely be an interesting experiment with a larger sample size.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

i will do it with a larger sample as soon as i have a little more time, although the other 3 tads appear to be about the same size, they really aren't. the last two are closer in size since they were the only ones that got less water changes. A larger pool of tads woudl be better.


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## gary1218 (Dec 31, 2005)

I'll tell you what.....................I'm willing to be a good guy and do ALL this testing with greater numbers of tads. Just send me a PM and I can give you my address to send me all your tads so that I'll then have a large number to test


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## sports_doc (Nov 15, 2004)

Gary you not helping  

Julio, good start. Excellent concept. Keep at it!!

I may be wrong but wasnt there a referenced post in the past few months on DB that showed significant increased SLS and slowed growth rates WITH water changes?? Where in the world was that?

S


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

I do remember something like that Shawn, but I don't think it was a thread but a post in a thread so that might be a hard one to track down. I can say that I have had mixed results on the water change issue. I used to do constant water changes and never had a problem with SLS, but that was with leucs and imitators each from one parent group. That easily could have been the reason or it could have been something else. For whatever reason I started getting more frequent instances of SLS from other frogs using the same method, so I kinda started doing the minimal water change/ no water change technique, and the SLS #'s have decreased. Definitely not scientific and in no ways proving a point, just kinda providing some personal history.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

sports_doc said:


> Gary you not helping
> 
> Julio, good start. Excellent concept. Keep at it!!
> 
> ...


Not sure, if there was then i definitely missed it. I will see if i can find it.


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## Corpus Callosum (Apr 7, 2007)

I could not find any thread that mentions an increase in SLS due to water changes, so perhaps I missed it as well.

But here is another thread with pics that I thought of when you mentioned a detailed thread on tadpole rearing: 

http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=31240


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