# R. benedicta baby



## Chris Miller (Apr 20, 2009)

First one out of the water - several more on their way this one is smaller than the others:
With flash









No flash









With a dime


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## ChrisK (Oct 28, 2008)

Awesome man, wow that's pretty small. Good luck with them!


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## Chris Miller (Apr 20, 2009)

Yeah, the other ones are a bit bigger. At least fantastica group frogs grow quickly and eat bigger food. This one's eating wingless melanogaster.


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## D3monic (Feb 8, 2010)

Very cute! I cant wait to add those to my collection.


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## VancouverBetta (Sep 25, 2009)

So cool! Congrats!!


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## keith campbell (Aug 11, 2007)

Congrats!! Great looking froglet, I really like the raccoon masks these guys sport. Hope to see more around.

Keith


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

Beautiful froglet


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## gluedl (Oct 8, 2008)

Congratulations, well done. And a nice froglet for sure.



gluedl


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## Newt1 (Feb 25, 2007)

That's so cool, Great looking froglet Thanks for the pics


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

congrats!! tiny baby, did the parents raise it or did you?


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## Chris Miller (Apr 20, 2009)

Thanks everyone!



Julio said:


> congrats!! tiny baby, did the parents raise it or did you?


I did. I have yet to see a fantastica group frog lay nutritive eggs for their tadpoles (have run an experiment twice - working on a brief write up), so I figured it'd be best to pull them and raise them on my own.


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## markpulawski (Nov 19, 2004)

Chris i gave a friend in Atlanta 4 LL Fants about 1.5 years ago, he never pulled a clutch and now has 20+ LL Fants in his 125. Not sure if the tads ate detritus in brom axils or were fed by the parents.


Aurotaenia said:


> Thanks everyone!
> 
> 
> 
> I did. I have yet to see a fantastica group frog lay nutritive eggs for their tadpoles (have run an experiment twice - working on a brief write up), so I figured it'd be best to pull them and raise them on my own.


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## JimO (May 14, 2010)

That is so cool. Benedictas are now on my wish list.


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## MD_Frogger (Sep 9, 2008)

Very nice Chris!!! These must be the very first offspring from the first import! Other than Aaron's I suppose.


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## Chris Miller (Apr 20, 2009)

markpulawski said:


> Chris i gave a friend in Atlanta 4 LL Fants about 1.5 years ago, he never pulled a clutch and now has 20+ LL Fants in his 125. Not sure if the tads ate detritus in brom axils or were fed by the parents.


I had several copperhead fantastica morph out in viv and all the while more eggs were being laid and tads deposited which made me curious since generally imitators and vanzolinii will reach a limit on how many tadpoles they will produce and rear at one time (at least in captivity). The fantastica would keep laying and depositing as long as I added more water holding containers. At one point I had about 14 tadpoles in the viv with 8 of them in glass mis-en-place bowls. I noticed that I never saw any eggs in the glass bowls, so I took 10 at different stages of development and from different containers in to the lab and a buddy sacrificed them for me and then he and his PI looked at the gut contents and found only insect remains, algae and detritus. I also repeated this with uakarri and lowland fantastica (now that they are breeding), albeit with smaller samples N=4 and N=5 respectively, and found the same lack of egg material in the gut.

Going further in, I wondered if the fantastica possessed the same requesting behavior that imitator do (tickling the female with the tail and mouth). I placed 1 glass mis bowl and two water holding black film canisters in my green imitator tank as well as my copperhead fantastica tank. Once they contained larvae (they were populated within 4 days of each other - all 3 eggs from one imitator clutch of 3 and 3 fantastica eggs from a clutch of 6) I swapped the tads. The fantastica tads in the imitator tank ate the initial eggs that were left in the tank for the imitator tads. Checking nightly, I only found eggs one more time in one of the black film canisters containing the fantastica tads. The tadpole in the glass bowl was fed 4 times in total (2-3 eggs every 3 days) but never reacted to the parental visits with the twitching and tickling common to imitator and the requesting behavior. 27 days after the switch the imitator laid another clutch of fertile eggs. No eggs were ever observed in the imitator tadpole containers in copperhead fantastica enclosure and the one imitator in the glass bowl did exhibit requesting behavior when an adult (male or female) would soak in the glass bowl (side note: never had a lot of standing water in thumbnail vivs but watching these frogs use the containers for a quick dip has changed my mind). At 35 days post switch I had the tads sacrificed and gut contents analyzed. Once again there was no egg matter in the gut.

I then decided to check the potential for imitator to act as surrogates to other species of known facultative egg feeders (vanzolinii). I repeated the procedure of the above test but this time gave the green imitator 2 vanzolinii and 2 copperhead fantastica tadpoles and the copperhead fantastica 2 vanzolinii to care for. One tad of each species in a glass bowl and one in a film canister. While I am only at day 28, I have noticed that the vanzolinii in the imitator enclosure have been fed eggs (and requested them as seen in the glass bowl) and are larger than the ones in the fantastica enclosure. Additionally, the green imitator aren't laying more eggs yet.

All the usual caveats apply to this like all other non peer reviewed 'research' if you can even call it that. There are plenty of holes in what I have done and the sample size of parental frogs is small. I do think that the lack of requesting behavior (or at least really incompatible requesting) is quite telling. Especially since frogs known to raise their young in their tank (my green imitator have morphed out over 10 babies on their own) lost interest in caring for the tadpoles.


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## ktewell (Dec 17, 2009)

Wow, not sure what's up with that. I doubt I'll ever be at the point where I'm sacrificing a bunch of tads just to see what they ate (not cause I think it's wrong, but because I get so attached to my frogs). But that little froglet is damn sexy!


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## poimandres (Mar 28, 2009)

Very nice! Congrats on your success with these benedicta, I am happy to know that these frogs recently introduced to our hobby are producing CB offspring.

I am very interested in reading your write up to your tad rearing experiment. As for this particular froglet how did you raise the tad? Water temps? Water changes? Food source? 

Cute little guy, that is for sure.


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

i want on a wait list 

james


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