# Breeding Dendrobates lamasi



## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Hello,
Newcomer to frog keeping here. We bought a pair of Panguana Green Leg D. lamasi from the folks at Black Jungle at the frog conference here in western MA in early June. We have a had a rainy, stormy summer the past few weeks, and as the daily thunderstorms started the male frog began to call. Within a few days, we had 3 eggs in the terrarium, on a bromeliad leaf. Two became moldy, but the third has a wiggling tadpole that hopefully will soon hatch. We took him out and have him in a little cup, about a week ago, and the frogs laid 3 more eggs the next day. We have those out now too, 2 of which seem viable, the third probably not. This is very exciting for us!

We went to see the Black Jungle guys again on the 10th (Sunday) and they set us up with some Indian Almond leaves to make "tadpole tea" as well as a cup of water and plants from one of their tadpole tanks to seed ours. We now have a 10 gallon tank with a couple inches of water and plants on top and lots of critters swimming around in it, hoping the eggs make it to hatching and we can add the tadpoles. We have a small container of Sera Micron that they were giving away at the frog conference, and are planning on using that to feed the tadpoles if they make it to hatching.

I'm just writing to see if others breed this species, and what your experiences are. I've been reading a lot about breeding dart frogs in general, and got lots of great advice at Black Jungle, but just wondered if others who breed this particular species have any other words of wisdom. Thanks for listening, and thanks in advance for any comments,
Bill


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

well when you raise them in a community tank just keep an eye on cannibalism, they are fairly easyt o breed, and will priduce a so many tads that you will have a hard time finding space for them, so you might want to let them raise 1 or 2 tads when you run out of space. Almond leaves and all the other stuff are great food sources.


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## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Thanks for the encouragement, Julio. The first tadpole hatched this morning, and we still are keeping him in his little cup with some of the water from the bigger tank and a couple of floating Salvinia plantlets, and put in a pinch of Sera Micron. He seemed too tiny to plunk into a huge ten gallon tank, even with only a couple inches of water in it. We'll see that he's eating and staying alive first. Thanks again, and let's hope you're right about 'more tadpoles than we know what to do with'!
Bill


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## knuckles4696 (Jun 23, 2008)

congrats. on your good luck! i hope you the best of luck with breeding them and welcome to the board!


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## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Another update--
We now have two tadpoles in the 10 gallon tank, and 4 eggs incubating, and 4 more eggs in the terrarium that they just laid yesterday. So far so good, though we had one tadpole die. The oldest (about 2 or 3 weeks old) we put into the 10 gallon tank about a week ago, now that he is looking bigger. We had 2 others from the second clutch of eggs, one of which hatched a week later than the other. One of these two died a few days ago in his little cup, so we put the other one into the 10 gallon tank too, figuring this might be a more stable system than the little individual cups, so now there are two in there. Most of the top of the tadpole tank is now covered with Salvinia, and there are lots of tiny critters swimming around in there, as well as lots of snails. We were warned, above, to watch for cannibalism, but the two tadpoles have an incredible amount of room in the tank, and lots of hiding spots, and so far no problems. We use some of the water from this tank to rinse the eggs when we remove them, hoping that this Indian Almond tannin water will help to keep the eggs from getting moldy. So far so good. Thanks for the encouragement,
Bill


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## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Hello All,
Updating info on our lamasi pair--lots of eggs and tadpoles, but we have done pretty poorly in keeping the tadpoles alive. Mostly, I think, because we allowed the temps at night to get too low, and the tadpole have then died, most just a few nights ago. We now have some supplemental heating, so the one remaining tadpole in the tadpole tank will hopefully survive

The frogs themselves are doing well raising their own, it seems! The male has been carrying tadpole(s) around for a week or more. There are a lot of small bromeliad axils in the tank, so hopefully he is using those, but we also put a small cup of water down on the ground, and I'm going to try to prop another one up in the bromeliad area somewhere. They seem to be doing well--he calls to the female a lot, and we see them near each other frequently, so hopefully she is laying eggs. We were also hoping we might get another egg mass or two to try raising some more tadpoles on our own, but they don't seem to be laying eggs on the leaves etc. now that they have tadpoles to feed.

I took a couple of slightly blurry photos which I'll try to post if I can figure out how to do that.
Thanks,
Bill


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## CHuempfner (Apr 27, 2008)

Hey! Congrats on the rabbit... I mean Lamasi farm 
I have not raised froglets from eggs to tadpoles to froglets yet, but I have raised a few tadpoles into froglets and I was also thinking that the individual cup idea would seem less stable than a larger amount of water, but the cannibalistic tadpole thing scared me. I was thinking of ways to go about it and I did find a picture that someone posted on here with a 10 gallon ( I think) that had water up to a certain point with cups placed in the water all next to each other. Im not sure if the cups had holes in them to allow water transfer or if it was all for insulation. I was just thinking about it and saw that you were trying your hand at it too.
Hope all goes well with yours!
Crystal


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## oldlady25715 (Nov 17, 2007)

They will raise the tads on their own just fine . I had a breeding pair and for a little while and froglets were just appearing in the tank. I don't think I had enough springtails in the tank though and only ended upwith one growing up. Make sure you have lots of springtails because the juvies are too small to eat fruitflies.


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## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Thanks for the helpful replies. We went back to Black Jungle and got a springtail starter culture and set that up with some moist-but-not-wet coco fiber in a plastic sweaterbox. I gave the springtails some rice grains (uncooked, though maybe they should have been cooked?) and some tropical fish flakes sprinkled lightly on top of the coco fiber, then lightly misted. Put one third of the culture in there, left one third in the original container and added some plain moist coco fiber. Then, toasted some oak leaves from outside to kill any pathogens, crumbled them up and added to the bottom of the frog tank, then put the other third of the culture in there, hoping to start seeding the tank with springtails, in advance of any morphing froglets, which shouldn't be out for at least a couple of months or more. We also added a couple of small cups in the tank for extra deposition sites--ignored, so far. They love those bromeliads! Also found another clutch of 3 eggs in the tank, all of which look good so far. Pulled them to incubate ourselves; we'd still like to get a better handle on raising tadpoles ourselves, even if the parents can do it better. There seems to be no shortage of eggs, at least so far.
Thanks for all of the advice,
Bill


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## elmoisfive (Dec 31, 2004)

You will find that the parents do fine in raising offspring and letting them do so reinforces their natural behavior plus moderates the number of offspring they produce in a given period of time (speaking as someone who once had over 100 lamasi froglets on his hands  ).

While some people pull the froglets after they morph out they will do fine in their parent's viv for the first couple of months provided there is ample food available.

Best of luck.

Bill


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Hey Bill, so how many tads do you have now.


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## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Hi Julio,
Only one. We had 6, but we didn't do a very good job of taking care of them, as I said in an earlier post. Actually, I guess we're doing many things right, but one major thing we did wrong was not providing any supplemental heat, and not turning the heat on in our house yet. So a week or so ago, when the temps went down into the 40's overnight, all of the tadpoles in the small cups died. The only one to survive was the big guy in the 10 gallon tank, who is doing fine--probably his water temp didn't change as much. We didn't think it would get that cold in the house, but it did.

Since then, I've set up the Hovabator incubator at about 72 degrees. I have a clutch of 3 eggs in there, all wiggling happily. And the parents in the tank are raising some of their own, but I don't know how many. The male has had tadpoles on his back multiple times over the past two weeks, and there are many bromeliad cups where he could be putting them. We want them to raise their own, as has been suggested above. But we also want to try our hand at raising some, to learn how to do it right, so we are doing that also. Probably we'll get less clutches to raise, now that they have their own tadpoles to feed in the terrarium, but that's OK. If we get a few frogs, I am going to set up another terrarium at work, where we already have a very popular day gecko named Norbert (who sells pet insurance here at work also...)

Thanks for asking!
Bill


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

try not to let them raise any more than 2-3 tads at a time as that can put a big strain on the female laying many unfertilized eggs to feed the tads, also try a feed a little heavier when they are raising the tads so they get plenty to eat as they are expending more energy then usual.


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## BillB55 (Aug 7, 2008)

Thanks, Julio. I don't know how many they have, and I'm not really sure how to find out. The tank is densely planted , and I can't see into the bromeliads very well, in most cases. I have been removing egg masses as I've found them, and I'll try to continue to do that. Unfortunately, I'll be away for the next two weeks, and everybody's going to work to be babysat there. I don't really want to move the terrarium, but there's no one I trust to watch them at home, and they'll do a good job of feeding them at work. I'll try to make a good inspection of the tank just before I leave and remove any eggs I find, so that they only have to take care of the tadpoles they already have.

They are getting a good number of fruit flies (25 or 30?) daily, as well as the springtails that I've now introduced into the tank. The flies are dusted with Rep Cal, Herpivite, and/or (Dendrocare? not sure of the name; supplement dust I got at Black Jungle). Thanks for your advice,
Bill


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