# How "gravid" is too "gravid?"



## SmackoftheGods (Jan 28, 2009)

What this thread really amounts to is I'm not sure whether to be concerned or not....

I've been dealing with a proven pair of Rio Branco pumilio since 2008. I finally got them breeding for me a while back, but in relation to the length of the frog, the female is the fattest, heaviest looking frog I've ever seen.

I had a couple of froglets morph out and then die pretty quickly. Being concerned I got them fecaled, which came back negative. I had the fecals cultured to look for bacterial or fungal infection, which came back negative. I also managed to get one of the dead froglets in to be necropsied within 12 hours of the froglet's death. The person who performed the necropsy told me she had no idea why the froglet died. The stomach was filled with food. Histopathology was performed - neither fungus nor bacteria was detected (I assume she meant harmful bacteria or fungus in harmful amounts - fungus and bacteria is everywhere).

That being said, my female is still enormous (in my experience she seems abnormally large), and yet she's still able to make it to the top of the vivarium. So, I'm not sure if I should be concerned and continue to run tests on the vivarium or if I should assume that she's just very gravid and let her do her thing....


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

SmackoftheGods said:


> What this thread really amounts to is I'm not sure whether to be concerned or not....
> 
> I've been dealing with a proven pair of Rio Branco pumilio since 2008. I finally got them breeding for me a while back, but in relation to the length of the frog, the female is the fattest, heaviest looking frog I've ever seen.
> 
> ...


 
Did they look at tissues for things like squamous metaplasia or did they just look for pathogens? The liver looked normal? 

Ed


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## B-NICE (Jul 15, 2011)

Can you take a picture of her...


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## stemcellular (Jun 26, 2008)

Interesting, the female I have is equally rotund. Maybe something in the population?


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## jeeperrs (Jan 14, 2010)

Can you define how you are using the word gravid? I would assume you mean the size of the frog due to eggs. However, after reading the post it sounds like you may be possibly using the term for obesity.


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## pnwpdf (Nov 9, 2010)

Ed said:


> Did they look at tissues for things like squamous metaplasia or did they just look for pathogens? The liver looked normal?
> 
> Ed


Squamous metaplasia in froglets? That would surprise me more than in a mature frogs, but then again I am not familiar with occurrence rates of carcinoma in frogs.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

pnwpdf said:


> Squamous metaplasia in froglets? That would surprise me more than in a mature frogs, but then again I am not familiar with occurrence rates of carcinoma in frogs.


Not a cancer, a subtle sign of vitamin A deficiency (see 
Wright KM. 2006. Overview of amphibian medicine. In: Mader DR, ed. Reptile Medicine and Surgery. 2nd ed. St. Louis: Saunders, Elsevier. p. 941-971 (there are other references as well).​It typically first appears in the bladder and kidneys.. and is a potential indicator of an inability to react well to stress or immune challenges.


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## SmackoftheGods (Jan 28, 2009)

jeeperrs said:


> Can you define how you are using the word gravid? I would assume you mean the size of the frog due to eggs. However, after reading the post it sounds like you may be possibly using the term for obesity.


I'm actually aware of the proper usage of the term. The quotes around the word is intended to convey my dubiousness about whether or not I should be using that term. The fattness of the frog in combination with the dying froglets implies to me something is going wrong, but the vet who conducted the fecals and sent the corpse off to be necropsied told me that since all the tests came back negative the female was more than likely just very gravid. I still have my doubts.



Ed said:


> Did they look at tissues for things like squamous metaplasia or did they just look for pathogens? The liver looked normal?
> 
> Ed


Ed, I don't know what squamous metaplasia is. However, they told me that they took tissue slides from each of the organs and didn't find anything abnormal (I don't know if that answers your questions). They said that they couldn't see anything abnormal about any of the organs. This is the same frog I was e-mailing you about a month or two ago - the female's gotten really fat again. She had a reduction in size a little while ago, but has slowly put on the weight again. Which, again, could point to gravidness, I've just never seen a female get so fat from being gravid.





stemcellular said:


> Interesting, the female I have is equally rotund. Maybe something in the population?


Ray, is your female THIS rotund?

A view from the top to show the roundness of the stomach.










A view from the side to show how low the stomach hangs.










A view dead on to really show how the stomach relates to the head.


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## ExoticPocket (Dec 23, 2010)

Holy crap!! That is one big female! Hope she produces some good offspring..


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## coxdre123 (Aug 3, 2009)

Jake,

I have a friend who has a female Rio Branco very similar in size to yours. It may be just something in the population of females that makes them very gravid. Overall it's a very beautiful frog.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Fat is stored in the abdominal cavity as large pads (deposits), which take up room in the abdomen. The fat pads could be taking up so much space that once the frog ovulates, there is little available space for the eggs so the abdominal wall gets pushed out resulting in the frog looking "excessively" zaftig.... 

Ed


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## SmackoftheGods (Jan 28, 2009)

If thats the case then here's to the next batch of offspring... Hopefully these ones will grow to be adults.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

SmackoftheGods said:


> If thats the case then here's to the next batch of offspring... Hopefully these ones will grow to be adults.


We're all tapping our feet and waiting patiently, Jake. Well...maybe not patiently.


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## Zoomie (Jul 3, 2011)

That is one big, bow-legged woman!


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Wow... it looks like she swallowed a marble! I'm sure that marble was dusted with some good supplements, but I'm not quite sure what to make of this unorthodox diet.

After she releases those eggs, would it be a good idea to cycle your frogs down from breeding to let them skinny up a bit?


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## Cfrog (Oct 28, 2011)

beautiful frog!


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## Rusty_Shackleford (Sep 2, 2010)

How long has it been since she's laid any eggs?


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## SmackoftheGods (Jan 28, 2009)

hypostatic said:


> Wow... it looks like she swallowed a marble! I'm sure that marble was dusted with some good supplements, but I'm not quite sure what to make of this unorthodox diet.
> 
> After she releases those eggs, would it be a good idea to cycle your frogs down from breeding to let them skinny up a bit?


*shrug* I'm not even sure how to cycle these guys down anymore.... I only mist once ever five days for these guys. They're still going.

Jon, I've never seen these guys lay eggs... or court... or do anything. In fact, I never see the male in this tank anymore. but I hear him ever day. And I see the female in the bottom of the tank ever day.... All I've ever seen is froglets crawl out.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

SmackoftheGods said:


> *shrug* I'm not even sure how to cycle these guys down anymore.... I only mist once ever five days for these guys. They're still going.
> 
> Jon, I've never seen these guys lay eggs... or court... or do anything. In fact, I never see the male in this tank anymore. but I hear him ever day. And I see the female in the bottom of the tank ever day.... All I've ever seen is froglets crawl out.


Wow. Now I'm really interested in seeing a picture of the tank lol


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## markpulawski (Nov 19, 2004)

Jake were the offspring that died in with the parents, if so what size is the tank. I have never had issues with baby Pums in big tanks with parents (75 - 100 gallon), I have had several baby Pums disappear in 20 - 30 gallon tanks when left in with parents....I think the males will stress the baby's sometimes, especially in smaller tanks.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

markpulawski said:


> Jake were the offspring that died in with the parents, if so what size is the tank. I have never had issues with baby Pums in big tanks with parents (75 - 100 gallon), I have had several baby Pums disappear in 20 - 30 gallon tanks when left in with parents....I think the males will stress the baby's sometimes, especially in smaller tanks.


I think this is going to be more of a individual case with the enclosures and possibly certain frogs. I've had as many as 1.2.3 Bastimentos pumilio in a 20 gallon verticle with no signs of aggression until the froglets were close to adult size. I've also seen a lack of aggression in my caucheros. 

Lotters et al, report that male pumilio under natural conditions do not males did not defend the territories from non-calling males, females, juveniles, other dendrobatids, they only defended against other calling males. This makes me wonder why we are seeing a difference in the captive animals versus the ones in the wild. 

Ed


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## jeeperrs (Jan 14, 2010)

Ed said:


> I think this is going to be more of a individual case with the enclosures and possibly certain frogs. I've had as many as 1.2.3 Bastimentos pumilio in a 20 gallon verticle with no signs of aggression until the froglets were close to adult size. I've also seen a lack of aggression in my caucheros.
> 
> Lotters et al, report that male pumilio under natural conditions do not males did not defend the territories from non-calling males, females, juveniles, other dendrobatids, they only defended against other calling males. This makes me wonder why we are seeing a difference in the captive animals versus the ones in the wild.
> 
> Ed


 My gut response would be that in captivity they are limited to 24 cubic feet (large tank) and as small as 3 cubic feet. These restrictions are probably compounded by food supply, tank temps, humidity, etc. That is just my gut reaction.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

jeeperrs said:


> My gut response would be that in captivity they are limited to 24 cubic feet (large tank) and as small as 3 cubic feet. These restrictions are probably compounded by food supply, tank temps, humidity, etc. That is just my gut reaction.


 
It depends on specific resource allocations.. food supply is not one of them nor is temperature or (in the vast majority of cases humidity since many people strive to achieve 80% or greater as uniformly in the tank as possible)... If you have a copy of Poison Frogs by Lotter's et al or can access one I strongly suggest looking at the density of the frogs (including calling males) in one of the pictures. In a surprisingly small area, there is a very high density of frogs (I think I counted at least 12 with at least 2 actively calling males) in the picture). 

Calling sites, deposited eggs and tadpole deposition sites are the resources defended by pumilio... and those sites according to the literature are not defended against froglets... 

Which brings us back to why does it work in the wild but doesn't in captive conditions...


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Hmmm, yeah, I was actually thinking about this yesterday night, that the dead froglets might be caused by aggression/stress from the male, which is something that I've read happens in the hobby, but not in the wild.

Oh, and does the viv have a water feature? Or a lot of standing water in broms? I'd suppose that if there's enough standing water it doesn't need to be super humid to induce breeding?


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## SmackoftheGods (Jan 28, 2009)

hypostatic said:


> Wow. Now I'm really interested in seeing a picture of the tank lol


It's posted in this thread. It's the one right below the picture of my male rio Branco.

http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/members-frogs-vivariums/70229-frog-room-very-pic-heavy.html

The tank has filled out. Everything is rooted down. The bromeliad pups have pups now. No light gets beyond the leaves of the bottom huge brom (that brom alone is probably 20 inches across as it's grown in that tank).... It's basically a brom explosion with a single species of philodendron that's still doing well in that tank.

Mark, the tank is a 40 breeder vert. Not as large as some of yours, not as small as most seem to be putting theirs in.... I think I'm going to start pulling the froglets that I find.


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