# How did you get started in the hobby?



## leuc11 (Nov 1, 2010)

Hey guys I was just wondering how you got started in the dart frog hobby?

When I was 8 and I saw some darts at my local pet store I new i'd be hooked for life


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## PantMan (Dec 10, 2009)

I was actually looking into keeping tropical plants in terrariums but as my research evolved I discovered the dart frog hobby. Then I actually did a lot of research on this board. Got my first luecs from richard who also showed me his frog room and gave me alot of good advice. Its been almost 2 years since then I just spent about 1K on my first rack and I've only finished the first shelf.


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## erlese (Jun 11, 2008)

2006. A kid was busted for growing marijuana ( hydroponics AKA lecca) used for 12 different plants. Well. He had 5 Vivariums with darts. ( I felt sorry for the frogs) police were going to confiscate them. I asked to take them. After that I was hooked!!


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## heatfreakk3 (Oct 15, 2008)

I think there is another thread on this. I got into darts when I saw a guy selling some at a local reptile show, he's now a good friend of mine, and I have quite a bit of this collection  lol.


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## InHoc1855 (Apr 28, 2011)

I started out with reptiles. First bought a spotted python when i was in HS, it escaped . Then in college i bought a Brazilian Rainbow boa, after researching a bit on natural looking cages i came across some sites (blackjungle and im pretty sure this forum) but didnt get to in to it at the time. 

Once my snake got to big for my exo 18" cube i started looking for new residents, and it was at this time i wanted to make a living vivarium. I purchased two baby Gargoyle geckos at the Sacramento Reptile show and started my construction. While doing research on how to build the background i slowly but surely got sucked in.

I have been ravenously scouring these forums for the past two months before i build my second viv and aquire my first group of dart frogs. I can almost feel the cameras froma future episode of "Animal Hoarders" looming in the distance.... haha


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## dablock (Aug 7, 2007)

I've always been fascinated with the dart frogs I've seen at various zoos or aquariums that I've been lucky enough to visit. Then I learned that Frog Day (2005, I think) was going to be at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens (about 100 miles away from me). My wife wanted to go also and thought we might get a couple of frogs. I stated that I just wanted to learn about keeping the frogs first and maybe get into purchasing them at a later date. We enjoyed seeing the frogs, talking to the vendors and listening to the various lectures. Well later that day, we returned home with two pre-made vivariums from Black Jungle and five or six froglets! Now, six years later, I'm still loving my darts!


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## Azurel (Aug 5, 2010)

I had before I got into dart frogs been in the reef hobby for 25+ years and started toget burned out after so long. I seen some pictures of R. imitator 'varadero' pictures of 
D3monic's on one of the reef boards and it blew my mind that there were little animals that had these colors. It took about 3 weeks of talking to him and another frogger on that site that I choose to make a change.....I sold off all my coral and equipment which totally funded my main display and group of varadero.....Been addicted since and have added 4-5 other Ranitomeya to my collection.


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## vugger#1 (Jul 20, 2009)

I was a freshwater fish guy for 29 years then one day I stopped over at a fish friend’s house and he showed me his viv and the next thing you know I could not build a viv for myself fast enough. That was 4 years ago. Now I have 22 vivs complete and 23 different types of frogs and I only one 90 gallon fish tank up and running
Great hobby!!!!!!


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## Boondoggle (Dec 9, 2007)

I made a thoughtless spontaneous purchase. 

I had experience with fresh and salt water tanks, but I was a "snake guy" with rooms dedicated to stacks of cages. I went down to Anaheim for a show and on a complete whim decided to buy a couple tiny Azureus and a pre-built 10 gallon tank for my wife. I made every mistake in the world with those frogs. 

Over time I started noticing how much more I was enjoying the frogs so I bought another pair. Only about then did I really start to educated myself regarding their care. Pretty soon I was selling snake hatchlings to fund frogs. Then I was selling adult pairs and cages to fund frogs. Now all I have are frogs.

I still have that original pair, and they produce for me every month. They are all in much larger tanks now.


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## deboardfam (Feb 7, 2011)

Allen hunter brought a display to one of our reefing shows.. was interested then.. started researching paludariums.. realized couldnt keep much cool in them.. and that evolved into a vivarium.. then darts... so called allen up.. went to his house.. came home with a viv and some cobalts.


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

Been keeping herps my whole life. Native species only until I was 5, then I got my pair of ball pythons (1984) which I had until I sold them when I graduated high school. I mostly had snakes throughout junior and high school-corns, kings, milks, bullsnakes, but also had a breeding trio of tegus, and quite a lot of arachnids and a HUGE tiger salamander I brought back from Wyoming when I was 9 that I had till I sold him whenI graduated high school and moved away. I used to volunteer in the reptile/rainforest houses at the woodland park zoo, and fell in love with dart frogs then. I went a long time without any pets at all between age 18-25, except for one neurotic cal king I rescued from an old boss. When my life calmed down a bit, I really wanted to get back into herps, specifically darts, so I could combine my love of miniature orchids and vivarium keeping. My girlfriend bought me my first trio of darts (leucs) for my 26th birthday from Black jungle, and I havent looked back since. Now I have a few different species, but since I like making bigger planted vivs for display, instead of the whole rack set up thing, I am limited to the number of species I keep.


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## VicSkimmr (Jan 24, 2006)

I've been obsessed with dart frogs ever since I can remember, once I learned that you could keep them as pets I was hooked.


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## tclipse (Sep 19, 2009)

VicSkimmr said:


> I've been obsessed with dart frogs ever since I can remember, once I learned that you could keep them as pets I was hooked.



^This for me too. Once I figured out the FF's were flightless, GAME OVER MAN


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## Tomdarr (Aug 25, 2010)

My brother had been telling me for about a year how cool the dart frogs were. He and I had many discussions about the different species and conservation ideas. We both agreed that at some point we should do some cooperative project and see where it went. I was still a little hesitant about getting into them because I was already doing cichlids and did not have room to expand into much more. I finally went to visit my brother and checked out his frog room. From there it was only a short "hop" to get me into the frogs. He gave me a viv for my birthday last year and a pair of Azureus to get me started. He also taught me how to culture fruit flies and springtails. Since that time I now have 4 vivs with Cobalts, Patricias, and Azureus. One of my 55 gallon fish tanks has recently been converted into a 55 gallon viv that houses my cobalts and my fish room is now my frog room. My brother also introduced me to the goodness that is Dendroboard.


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## ribbit217 (Mar 21, 2011)

I've always been fascinated by darts and checked them out at every zoo/aquarium I have ever visited. But I never knew they could be kept as pets until Mike (it's all your fault! lol) came along. I'm sitting in my grad class doing the typical introduce yourself nonsense. I'm barely paying attention and I hear "I breed poison dart frogs." My ears perked up. My brain started screaming, "don't even think about it!" Now I have leucs and variabilis and spend the majority of my time watching them and researching them.

I don't smoke, don't drink anything with caffeine, and I only drink occasionally. I figure one addiction is permitted!


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## dewlou (Sep 2, 2007)

Went to see bill and kathy that were breeding darts and we bought 18 of them to get started and have enjoyed it ever since.


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

walked into the local pet store in 98-99 and saw some nicaraguan bjs. i HAD to have them. i also made every mistake in the book, and ended up with the pums, powder blues, and auratus, as well as 3 brackish tanks, an aquatic turtle display, chameleons, and a large reef tank. eventually i got out of the hobby (all of the animals) and a few years ago i decided a good way to occupy my time was to get back into animals. i started keeping fresh water puffers, since i had remember what a pain in the ass frogging used to be, until one day decided i was wasting time and money with the puffers that i could use on something i really liked, the frogs. i contacted the old breeder i knew (ray g. who had also gotten out of darts) and he referred me to bill, who he had known for years. of course i was looking for more BJs and quickly found out that they werent as common as they used to be, so i got mancreeks and auratus, and it took off from there.

james


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## DJboston (Oct 25, 2008)

I was a member of the New England Herp Society since I was 10 years old and my family always bought me books and supported my interest. First reptile was a diamond back water snake named venom when I was eight years old and then a ribbon snake. My mother owned a garter snake named fang as a kid. She loved her snake and it lived with her parents until after she went to college in the late 70s. What's cool is that the first snake I owned was housed in a 10 gallon tank and metal screen top that her snake was housed in from the late 60s. I had the snake for eight years and the tank was actually set up with the same light and heat rock she had bought in 1969. I have it somewhere. Looking back it was handmade by someone using heat tape and a ceramic pot that was cut. I learned that heat rocks were bad though this one actually had zero hot spots to burn the snake. I had venom up until 1998. So eight years from 1990-1998. Not bad for a first snake. He used to eat feeder fish out of this bowl lol

Around the mid 90s I got into reptiles heavily and was known as the kid with a room full of tanks. I kept a lot of different animals, bred a few here and there including leopard geckos, ball pythons, corn and king snakes, american black kingsnakes, mexican black, etc. I also had some pet reptiles like an adult savanah monitor I raised from a small hatchling to a 3ft huge adult. 

I was always obsessed with dart frogs and had a stuff toy and 3 figurines that actually had accurate colors. To me they were legendary and only in zoos when I'd see them and drool over their mystique. 

Fast forward to 1998-99, I did some research and bought an adult male cobalt at a NH reptile show. Silly me was still in reptile mode and a screen top was in my head still. I figured I could keep the tank misted and covered with plastic wrap. Didn't help and on a hot day, I found my frog dried out. Lesson learned. 3 months later I ordered 5 leucomelas from LLLreptile.com and they did great now that I switched to a glass top. I had still kept reptiles and bred sand boas and a few small boids up until 2006. 

Sold my frog collection due to fruit flies driving me nuts as I wasn't up on actually learning how to keep them contained or trapping flies at all. So I sold the frogs and in that time successfully bred green tree pythons, diamond pythons, albino ball pythons, and tons of geckos.

I slowly got out of the reptile hobby and in 2010 I decided that I was going to set up a dart frog tank again as I missed owning them. Nothing beats dart frogs for tank design and just being able to watch them all day. 

So now, my frog collection is on a single rack and I have 33 frogs including froglets, 30 tadpoles, and 30 eggs lol 

I'm pretty much to the point where I want my collection at. I have enough to enjoy until I can have a frog room. My fiance loves it and already knows quite a bit about dart frogs. I have 1 more tank I'm eventually going to set up for a special rare frog I've always wanted. Bout it.


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## Percularis (Mar 22, 2011)

Long story short...

Had app called Pocket Frogs. Went to lake. Saw a frog. Searched "buy tropical frogs" on google. Saw darts. Did research. Decided to buy darts. One day I decided to make a rather big purchase and it wiped out my dart money. Then I got some small, cute local frogs. They looked exactly like darts to me aside from the color difference. Now I have a froglet, a metamorph and two tads with back legs.


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## DJboston (Oct 25, 2008)

Local frog that looks like a dendrobatid?


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## BBoyette (Mar 9, 2009)

Went to the Baltimore Aquarium Valentine's Day 2009, they have an amazon rainforest exhibit which blew my mind at the time. Since then i've been hooked.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

I was abandoned at birth in Costa Rica. Fortunately I was adopted by a family of Blue Jean Pumilios and raised as their own. When I was old enough to move out, I spent the remainder of my life trying to pay them back by giving a loving home to any dart frogs I run across.
This also explains why I only eat insects.


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## PantMan (Dec 10, 2009)

ribbit217 said:


> I've always been fascinated by darts and checked them out at every zoo/aquarium I have ever visited. But I never knew they could be kept as pets until Mike (it's all your fault! lol) came along. I'm sitting in my grad class doing the typical introduce yourself nonsense. I'm barely paying attention and I hear "I breed poison dart frogs." My ears perked up. My brain started screaming, "don't even think about it!" Now I have leucs and variabilis and spend the majority of my time watching them and researching them.
> 
> I don't smoke, don't drink anything with caffeine, and I only drink occasionally. I figure one addiction is permitted!


Thats what you get for paying attention in class.


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## Percularis (Mar 22, 2011)

DJboston said:


> Local frog that looks like a dendrobatid?


To me they did. It's the body shape and the size mainly. They are about the same size of a dart (I've seen these local ones up to 1.5") and they are shaped like darts. Their posture is similar to a dart's also.

Here's the local frog (not my pic)...










The color obviously doesn't look anything like a dart's coloration, but don't you see a resemblance in the body shape? I see it, but it may just be me lol.


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## NVfrogger (Apr 10, 2011)

I have always loved frogs and reptiles. When I was a young lad I used to collect all kinds of animals I found in the desert or back yard and would house them in aquariums for a while and then let them go eventually when my mom would tell me its time to release the prisoner back into the world and that the animal(s) had spent enough time in solitary. I always had some type of animal. I was raised on a farm so had many farm type animals. I left for college to obtain a degree in plant science and a minor in entomology. When I was in college a professor of mine had some darts and I was fascinated by them. I Would go in to his office every day and watch them. For a grad present he gave me a small 10 gal fish tank with 2 leucs. I started getting some other frogs and had about 10 or so different varieties of darts. After about 13 years of working on the family farm I decided to go back to college and obtain a degree in education and teach school. I had to sell all my dart a sad day. I got a teaching job and left the family farm. About 6 months ago a couple students were looking at some pictures I had and they saw my dart pictures and had all kinds of questions about them. They asked me why I didn't have any in the classroom. So I decided to get back into darts and put a couple of displays in my classroom. I teach about biomes and lots of life science topics all year and felt it would be very beneficial for my students.


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## davidadelp (Sep 29, 2010)

deboardfam said:


> Allen hunter brought a display to one of our reefing shows.. was interested then.. started researching paludariums.. realized couldnt keep much cool in them.. and that evolved into a vivarium.. then darts... so called allen up.. went to his house.. came home with a viv and some cobalts.


I also was at that reef show and thats where I became really interested in darts it took me over a year or more to actually starting buying thing to get ready for my first viv but i had kept the thought of them in my head the whole time. I love my darts now I have 7 different species.


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## zzpop102 (Apr 24, 2010)

I really enjoy this thread. I use to have dart frogs about 5 years ago and dident know how to take care of them so I traded them to a friend. I was also more into lizards so I kinda just forgot about dart frogs. I got sick of cleaning up after my lizards so I got out of that hobby. 3 years past and I really wanted to get a exotic pet but dident want to have to clean up after it. So I got some more dart frogs. Now that I am older and understand how to take care of them(thank you dendroboard) I really enjoy the hobby. Its addicting and never get old. 

Mike


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## Peter Keane (Jun 11, 2005)

It all started for me back when I was very young, my dad was a pharmaceutical chemist and would take me to his work and show me these beautiful 'not-so-green' frogs. He would also bring home some and he kept them in a few tanks. Very simple set-ups with all the requirements these frogs needed. I was hooked at that time. In 1974, I saw my first dendrobatid frog at a local fish/reptile store in Yonkers, NY. I had enough money saved to buy it, it turned out to be a red & black D. lehmanni. This frog cost me a whopping $12.99 <sheesh, looking back>.. I put it in a well planted fish tank with many places to hide. My dad liked my purchase and told me to slope the tank to allow the frog differing heights and different levels to hide. I waited for the pet store to obtain other lehmanni, but no others came in and unfortunately some 2 and a half years later, the frog died alone. In the meantime I expanded my collection with what was common back then, D. pumilio (blue jeans), Cobalt tincs, Auratus all from the dealers lists. That pet store in Yonkers kept my phone number on hand. They would call me to advise black & green toads (atelopus various) D. histrionicus (bullseye, red-head, Ecuadorian, etc.) had come in on a regular basis. Of these I was able to breed D. auratus with consistency. My histos always laid eggs and only a few hatched into tads, but it usually ended there. I was happy with my collection, but yearned for more. I was sure someone else out there shared my passion. After several years of trying locally (NY Herp Society), I finally subscribed to 'Fauna Classifieds' and kept putting an ad out there for someone who was interested in this specialized hobby. A few years after my first ad, someone responded, a doctor from Wisconsin, named Dale Bertram and together we found others like Charles (Chuck) Nishihara, Ed Oshaben (Mr. leucomelas), Charles Powell (ADG (American Dendrobatid Group and FrogDay fame), Jack Cover (Curator of Amazon Rainforest exhibit in National Aquarium), Ted Kahn (Smithsonian), Dr. Behler, Curator of Herpetology Bronx Zoo, Dr. Ennenbach (German biologist), Elke Zimmerman (German herpetologist and author of the original Dendrobatid Bible "Breeding Terrarium Animals"), Rainer Schulte (German biologist and permanent resident of Peru) among others. We decided to upstart a 'specialized' International Group and called it I.S.S.D. (of the now defunct, International Society for the Study of Dendrobatids). This quarterly (at best) publication extended our arms beyond the US and specifically into Europe where the leaders on this hobby both Germany and Holland were now within reach for help. We met a gentleman from Holland, Erik Wevers, who brought into the US the very first legal shipment of captive bred D. azureus. These frogs were hand delivered to a few froggers here in the US at a VERY hefty price (for a dart frog at that time), well over $200 each at the time. To become established here in the US, Erik Wevers made it easy as he paired these frogs off. I purchased 2 pair and was able to within a month initiate breeding activity. The first froglets sold were only sold to what we deemed to be experienced enough to have these. The buyers had to go through an acceptance system. We quickly made back our initial investment and were very successful at getting these frogs established for many others to enjoy. We had our first meet to coincide with the big reptile symposium (the name eludes me) at Newark Airport (now known as Liberty International in Newark, NJ). This event was videotaped, I still have that somewhere in my video library (converted to DVD of course). Shortly after Erik Wevers had gone home, the Dendrobatidae Nederland came out with it's first 'English' version of their magazine. (Not as is stated in recent offerings of this same magazine, last years mags were not the first English offering). Offerings of frogs never seen in the US before are now becoming available through direct from Europe or through Bill Samples (Serpents Egg). Sheesh, I remember when the days when every 'thumbnail' as we now know them was a quinquevittatus/ventrimaculatus. It was only when John Uhern was offering frogs directly from Europe, he removed the 'crap shoot' of these frogs being brought in. As many of my old original frog friends left the hobby, along came AOL forums and I have met many others in these, such as Todd Kelley, Tor Linbo, Tim Paine, Black Jungle peeps to name just a few.. from there came the International Amphibian Days (IAD) where I met guys like Sean Stewart, Ed, Mike Schromm, etc... 

So, looking back.. I remember when I couldn't find another sole in the US that shared my passion, to being able to count on one hand the number of known froggers in this country for a long time. To writing (snail mail) all of the fellow froggers offering and getting tips on what was good, bad and ugly in dart-frogging. to the internet age from Frognet to AOL forums to Dendroboard and others like it and now with literally thousands of members. It's great and I say to you all.. Welcome, with open arms.. welcome to my world, enjoy!!.. I can only hope you have half the love for these frogs as I did and still do some 36-37 years later. You all have brought this hobby to where it is right now from where it was when I remember and for that I say, Thank you to all of you because for all the experience, I still learn something new every day on here. I now have hopes for my daughter, who also loves these frogs (we take them to local schools in our area and the other kiddies love em too), that she will be a 'third generation' frogger. 

(Wow, again sorry for the long post (my passion got in there, lol)). 

God bless and Good night, <yawn.. yawn>

Peter Keane


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## eplants02 (May 15, 2011)

Ever since I saw them at the Central Park Zoo, I was hooked.


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## cryptokat (Mar 9, 2008)

I have always loved frogs, but never thought about keeping them until a few years ago when I went to the Baltimore Aquarium with my then boyfriend (now husband!) and obsessed over the dart frog exhibit. He suggested that if I liked them so much why don't I get some? Internet searches led us to find that this was actually possible and he bought me my first frogs from Sean Stewart.


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## nawth21 (Apr 17, 2008)

No idea, I was always an odd child. I'd come home with snakes and frogs and salamanders. Maybe it was watching too much Kermit. Luckily my parents were relaxed about it. I'd catch and raise tadpoles. In 5th grade I took a summer dissection and science course and when other kids wanted to grow up to be firemen and astronauts I wanted to be a paleontologist. LOL I've been keeping reptiles and phibs since junior high or so. Didn't get my first darts until 05? 06? Right around there. Found DB relatively soon after that, but unfortunately lost my original account in the board migration *shakes fist*


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## bshmerlie (Jun 2, 2010)

It started with a pair of firebelly toads for my daughter now one frog rack and nine species of frogs later...I'm hooked.


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## Dusted Fly (Apr 24, 2011)

When I was a young kid my passion was with the dinosuars. They just looked so unique and it was mind blowing that something like them used to walk the earth. I quickly learned that working with bones all day didn't sound as interesting as actually interacting and observing these species, so I found out about modern day reptiles and amphibians. I was always keeping snakes, frogs, salamanders, etc. in my window well during the summer monthes in elementary school. During middle school one of my mom's co-workers brought back a few anoles from a trip to Flordia. I quickly set up two (novice) tanks. In sixth grade, my teacher had a ten gallon tank in her room so naturally I ran over. I saw a huge bright blue and orange gecko. I was hooked on geckos. Fast forward a couple years and I now have the tokay gecko, 3 crested geckos, 2 anoles, and a giant gecko. Man the animals look so cool, why not make their cages look amazing as well? I hit the internet and reasearched vivariums (which led to this site). I've been facinated since. A month or so ago, I traded two of my crested geckos for a R. imitator. Currently, I'm looking to trade off my lizards and vivariums in hope of aquiring more dart frogs.


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## honeybee6 (Mar 28, 2011)

My wife decided she wanted a frog so I put her on a few sites. When she got a pac-man frog I was disappointed it wasn't a dart or tree frog. Now I have taken over on here and my viv is almost done.


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## curlykid (Jan 28, 2011)

I'm still in my teen years now, but i've always had a love for herps. ever since i was little my father would see a big pond and we had to look for frogs. when we're hiking in the forest and we see a log, we pick it up to look for salamanders. I always loved to go to pet stores and just look. When i was about seven i got my first pet, an African fat tailed gecko. i loved him, and i still do, even though he's a bit rusty now. Then at age ten i got my first chameleon....not a child's pet! i kept him up until he was about 14 months old, when he died of respiratory problems and dehydration, he refused to drink.  it didn't help that i barely ever dusted his crix. when i was about eleven i moved on to reefing. this was a very fun and rewarding hobby, but a lot of work and money! At this point i had always had darts on my mind, but it never really took off. I kept my reef tank for 2 1/2 years before selling it all. that was in august. i then proceeded to get my research fill on darts, and bought my first supplies. i still haven't built my first vivarium though. hopefully it will get done by the end of January.


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## the Dregs (Dec 16, 2007)

I have been interested in PDF's for years. I don't remember what really got me started, though. I have made several false starts in the last 3-4 years, but stopped before actually buying frogs due to to cost or fear that I'd kill the little guys.

I finally got a nice viv set up on this Christmas eve, and I should be getting actual frogs within a month!


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## Rusty_Shackleford (Sep 2, 2010)

curlykid said:


> I'm still in my teen years now, but i've always had a love for herps. ever since i was little my father would see a big pond and we had to look for frogs. when we're hiking in the forest and we see a log, we pick it up to look for salamanders. I always loved to go to pet stores and just look. When i was about seven i got my first pet, an African fat tailed gecko. i loved him, and i still do, even though he's a bit rusty now. Then at age ten i got my first chameleon....not a child's pet! i kept him up until he was about 14 months old, when he died of respiratory problems and dehydration, he refused to drink.  it didn't help that i barely ever dusted his crix. when i was about eleven i moved on to reefing. this was a very fun and rewarding hobby, but a lot of work and money! At this point i had always had darts on my mind, but it never really took off. I kept my reef tank for 2 1/2 years before selling it all. that was in august. i then proceeded to get my research fill on darts, and bought my first supplies. i still haven't built my first vivarium though. hopefully it will get done by the end of January.


Curlykid I must admit your post really bothers me. What makes you think you are ready/able to keep dart frogs? You admitted in your post that you killed your chameleon. You're right, they aren't kids pets, yet you as a kid killed it. The chameleon died of dehydration and respiratory problems because you didn't know how to take care of it and you didn't keep it in the right environment and you didn't even supplement it's diet correctly. And you wanna keep dart frogs???? I've kept and bred both chameleons and dart frogs. Dart frogs are more work, not just something pretty and cool to look at. So you probably fall into one of two categories. Kids who buy oscars and piranhas and monitor lizards just to see them eat fish and rats, then toss them away when they get too big or you lose interest, or two, you will get dart frogs and kill them or get bored in a year and sell all your stuff. Which I kinda like cause someone like me will get a good deal on your vivs. Why don't you wait a few years till you are more mature and better equipped to take care of a wonderful animal like a chameleon or a dart frog.


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

Well now, Curly was a young kid when he had that chameleon, and, it appears he didn't get good advice about keeping it (no dusting). Now he's an old kid and he's here doing his research. I say good for him


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## vivlover10 (Oct 10, 2010)

To answer the question, I got into this awesome hobby about year and a half ago. I really wanted to get some red eyed tree frogs and crested geckos. I came across this site as well as vivarium forums. I really wanted to build a viv and show it off. I also got hooked on them varaderos. I built my viv after a year of research and got 2 varadero froglets. With some luck I never knew I had they turned out to be a pair! Now their first froglet is comeing out of water. I am loving this hobby. I also had to right a lot of essays to get my mom to allow fruit flies in the house. My relatives always look in the tank and beg for updates. Right now I'm about to start my next build and got tons of stuff to do so. 

Hey, Rusty all because he still a kid/teen doesn't mean he can't get darts. I'm about his age and look at what I've done. I got an 'intermidiate' frog as my first and they are doing great and are successfully breeding. If he does enough research and takes his time he will do fine. He just needs to no the ins and outs of this hobby. Also he didn't get the right info. People can change u no too. Good luck to you, curly and sorry for being a little mean to you Rusty.


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## Rusty_Shackleford (Sep 2, 2010)

Curly,
I hope you don't think I was being mean just to be mean. I do see you are doing a lot of research and obviously spending a lot of time on the board and I want to commend you for that. It sounds like you have learned from your mistakes. I just hate to see any animal suffer because of improper care when it could have been avoided. I'm sure you are taking those steps now.


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## Micro (Dec 26, 2011)

when i was 20 and i had this grand idea to house a bunch of different reptiles and amphibians together. Turns out after research this wasnt gonna be a good idea so i had to choose and i just really liked the PDF a lot more than the others so im going with them


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## karl47 (Sep 3, 2008)

Growing up on a farm in Northeastern PA since the mid 50s, I've tried my hand at rabbits, pigeons, screech owls and a great horned owl, a flying squirrel, a skunk, a wild turkey hen and a bunch of gardner snakes and leopard frogs. Next, I kept tropical fish since my teens in the '60s, tried saltwater fish on Okinawa and Taiwan in the mid 70s and even had a newborn Chinese alligator in Taipei.
My granddaughter, who we've raised in our house since '96, dabbled in tree frogs for a couple of years until the cost of crickets got out of hand. We started going to reptile shows in Hamburg, PA, in 2005, and finally gave PDFs a try. 
I now have a 50g and a 55g horizontal vivs in my den, populated with Azureus and Leucs.
Two rooms in my basement, that used to be a woodworking shop, are now home to various Auratus, SA tricolors, BL Vents, Orange Lamasi, a red eared slider turtle, and a 29g tropical fish tank.
Building and planting the vivariums, raising the few tads I get and watching the adults' odd behavior is well worth the time and cost involved.


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## evolvstlldartfrogs (Oct 5, 2007)

My brother (the other half of sharpn2, since I've pretty much taken over the account he already had) was in evolvstll's biology class. The man had some in his classroom for a long time, and I think it was love at first sight for my brother. It wasn't long before he had many, many frogs of his own, though I admit I was never even remotely interested back then. I was doing my own thing, but when my brother went away to college a few years ago, he asked me to look after his frogs. He'd sold all but two or three pairs of his favorites, but I was so worried I'd kill the things that I basically just watched them for hours every day, making sure they were eating and whatnot.

That was all it took, really. I've since purchased those original frogs from my brother, and together we've expanded to the point where others call us obsessive (and they're not wrong). I still have the original frogs and will have them until the day they die of old age, but this was all just a case of one hobbyist infecting someone who infected someone else in turn.


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## jacobi (Dec 15, 2010)

My dad is a master carpenter and craftsman, and used to to have a small snake collection in Colorado Springs. Combine the two and you get absolutely breathtaking display vivariums. He mainly had Boa constrictors, Lampropeltis sp., and garter snakes. One of my first memories as a child, I must have been two, is my dad helping me hold a small, brightly coloured snake. One of my favourite memories from that time is when one of the garter snakes gave birth and the babies escaped and crawled EVERYWHERE. I've been told that I was trying to help catch them and was stuffing them in my diaper until my mother found me at it and had a fit... LOL. He also had several large (2-300 gallon) fishtanks he had built into the walls of our house. 
Being that we moved to Australia when i was three to be with my mothers family, he had to sell everything. Most of them were donated to local zoos along with their custom display cases. Now I'm wondering what happened to them... anyway. My dad started up his collection with a GTP, which according to him were not easily available back in the 80's, and said it was worth moving to Australia for! So I got my appreciation for large display vivariums from my dad.
Moving on, when I was ten, my step grandfather, who was a lighting engineer (I wish he was still around to help me with vivarium lighting...) and had a huge cactus collection, and my grandmother, a botanist and geologist who collected Australian native orchids, took me to http://www.collectorscorner.com.au/Collectors.htm after I read a National Geographic article on habitat destruction in the Carolina's and how it was affecting the native carnivorous plants. Of course, I then had to find articles on pitcher plants and fly traps. I was hooked. 
I spent all my savings on a big box of CP's, and my dad helped me build a large terrarium to keep them in. That was my first foray into the hobby and related fields.
My dad also purchased a 40 acre property, which had a creek running through it. It was fascinating watching the native frogs, some of them, possibly juveniles, were the size of thumbnail darts. Blue tongue skinks, water dragons, snakes... it was awesome. When I was 12, I found a tiny little baby skink, unknown species, which I attempted to care for, in the same tank as a trio of nocturnal geckos I had rescued from my schools parking lot, where a tree had to be cut down as it was dropping branches. Sadly, I knew nothing about the necessity of UV, and the lizard died. That prompted a ton of reading about lighting and naturalistic vivariums.
For those of you who don't know, dart frogs are illegal to own in Australia, and I had been fascinated by a NG article about them, detailing their breeding in the US and how they lost much of their toxicity in captivity. 
Fast forward several years, I was in the USA for school, ended up staying. Attended my first reptile expo, which I had discovered by chance, saw Black Jungles vendor stand, one of the guys told me about Dendroboard when I expressed concern that I wasn't ready to care for darts, and two years later I'm trying to get my wife to pick the one she likes the best, since I have limited space for vivariums... 

Jake


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