# Embryonic plasma and protein structures regarding oophagy



## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

Please correct me if i am wrong but in all frogs which use oophagy to feed their tadpoles, the feeder eggs are composed of emryonic plasma and protein structures and thats it right?

Well i was wondering if anyone has synthesized or recreated these? I have never heard or read anythng about it besides feeding eggs of different animals.

What if you were to take essential proteins and created a gelatinous compund? Would tadpoles accept this? I guess theres only one way to find out but i am not eduacated enough to know where to derive these proetins and "essentials". anyone heard about it? 

The purpose of this would of course be to feed tadpoles that must be fed "feeder eggs", but instead be able to do it artificaially.

Looking forward to input on this subject


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## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

Mods please move this to breeding, eggs, and tadpoles, my mistake.


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## pigface (Apr 28, 2006)

I was thinking this same thing just recently and was wondering if you could put the nessasary vitamins and ingredients and mix it up into a clear flavorless gelitin - jello , and let it harden and cut little "eggs" out of it and feed it to pumilio tads ? I wouldn't have any idea of what to put into it but someone with some know how might be able to figure something out .


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## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

Yah i thought perhaps agar would be a good base to start with, maybe gelitin.

Does anyone know why eggs of different dendrobates are not accpeted (consistently), could it be do to "smell", or pharamones?


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

The problem you have to look at would be that tads don't know what the makeup of the eggs they eat are, so that's not why they eat them. They eat them becasue they look, smell, and taste like food. My guess is when the egg hits the water a miniscule bit of it dissolves in the water (not necessarily the egg, but the whole product) and creates a "flavor trail" to the eggs. The tads follow it, perhaps even see it (not sure how good their eyesight is) and probably even taste it to some degree. If the pseudoegg didn't look and taste and most importantly smell like the real thing, it would not be accepted no matter how close or far from the protein content was from the real thing. Essentially for this to work you would have to make a small egg looking mass that once it hit the water and dissolved in water a bit looked, smelled, and tasted likethe real thing. Pretty hard feat much less getting the protein makeup right. I think this could be possible in a lab situation but is probably a little ambitious for a home based frogger. As far as why they don't readily accept other eggs, my thought is that is somehow smells different int eh water and the size of the egg. I recently tried to put some unfertilized imi eggs in and they were rejected and after seeing the size of the real feeder eggs I was'nt surprised... they were about 3-4 times the size.


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## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

That is what i expected, well I do have access to a lab, but I dont know enough really to go putzing around making aritificial eggs. Maybe someday i will, i was just interested in furthering my eduacation regarding the subject.


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## sbreland (May 4, 2006)

If you have the abilities and the resources, I would say go for it. Ed should be able to direct you towards the protein and essential content to make the eggs similar to the real thing, but you would have to come up with a way to synthesize them on your own. Like I said before though, if you get the right ingerdients from him or someone like him and have access to a lab, play around with it and see what you can come up with.


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## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

Well i was thinking if you came up with a gooey type substance you could try and centrifuge it to get a more dense form, or boil it down to the right consistency. Maybe i will play around with it a bit. We'll see.

Moderators please move this post to breeding, eggs, and tadpoles!


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

This idea has been discussed for at least a decade. There have been reports of people successfully rearing oophagous tadpoles on artificial diets but no recipes (other than the old egg yolk trick which isn't very good) have become generally available.


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## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

Yah I realize that, but i was just looking fo input. Like you said not much else has been used but the chicken egg yolk trick, so maybe it is worth sa try to concoct something.


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## steelcube (Mar 17, 2004)

I always wonder if these would give a better result than chicken eggs:

-fish roe (or cooked fish roe), crab or even shrimps roe.
-quail eggs
-gecko salamander turtle eggs

Let me know if you are going to try this, will ya?


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## booboo (Jan 22, 2005)

I would be experimenting left and right but i only have 1 species of pumilio right now, and its a reltivley rare one, so i dont have tads to spare.

Its funny steelcube i wondered the exact same thing with the exception of the turtle/gecko egg theory.


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## Jordan B (Oct 8, 2004)

James, if you go with this i would happy happy to donate a few pumilio tads.


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## thekidgecko (Oct 30, 2006)

I will look into this as well....I have access to extensive labratory equipment and one teacher is a obsessed with biology and has a lab filled with stuff to test the molecular biology of things and such. The other has a masters in chem. so I might be able to get something done lol...I'll look into this as well. Now all I need is a pair of bastis or something else productive lol...


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## thekidgecko (Oct 30, 2006)

My science teacher has shown a lot of interest in this project, need some recommendations for species to work with. Primarily anything that produces lots of feeder eggs/tads. Looking at Man Creeks of Bastis, as they seem to be pretty universal pums. Any suggestions? Also, if anyone thinks I should, I could see if there is a diff. between morphs (cough-bluejeans-cough :lol if I can get the chem. composition of a more common morph first.

As a side note as well, I am currently working on an experiment with Suri. cobalts to see if methylene blue has an effect on the hatch rate of eggs in a sterile environment. Look for that being published sometime mid-late this year if I can get my pair to start breeding again :roll:


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