# Pulling Eggs



## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

A tinctorius posited a clutch on a leaf yesterday. This particular tank has slugs and will usually eat eggs. I pulled the whole leaf and stuck it in a deli cup with a bit of water so the leaf isn’t trying to dehydrate the egg mass. 

First, I assume trying to spatula the eggs onto a Petri dish is traumatic. Am I wrong? If so, what is protocol?

Second, I assume as the larvae breakdown their membranous sac, they can wiggle off the leaf into water all on their own? Upon which I will separate into individual cup.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

That sounds like the right call. Any chance you can cut all of the leaf away except for where the eggs are and just have that lay flat in the bottom of a container you can cover? That way you could put just enough water in to touch the bottom of the eggs. That's close to how I treat most of the eggs I pull, whether they were deposited on a butter lid or in a film canister.

Mark


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

DPfarr said:


> Second, I assume as the larvae breakdown their membranous sac, they can wiggle off the leaf into water all on their own? Upon which I will separate into individual cup.


Mark, do you have anything more to add on this part of the question? I feel as if this is a more challenging part of the process for novices to taking care of children that should be someone else's responsibility (man, are egg-feeding frogs ever easy...). 

I still struggle with the hatching point of development on my leucs -- some tads seem not to escape the egg on their own, and my bull-in-a-china-shop handling of tads needs some work.


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## DPfarr (Nov 24, 2017)

Encyclia said:


> That sounds like the right call. Any chance you can cut all of the leaf away except for where the eggs are and just have that lay flat in the bottom of a container you can cover? That way you could put just enough water in to touch the bottom of the eggs. That's close to how I treat most of the eggs I pull, whether they were deposited on a butter lid or in a film canister.
> 
> Mark


Copy that, trimmed the leaf to fit in a couple mm water. Where they would have the advantage of the outer circumference is slightly deeper.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Socratic Monologue said:


> Mark, do you have anything more to add on this part of the question? I feel as if this is a more challenging part of the process for novices to taking care of children that should be someone else's responsibility (man, are egg-feeding frogs ever easy...).
> 
> I still struggle with the hatching point of development on my leucs -- some tads seem not to escape the egg on their own, and my bull-in-a-china-shop handling of tads needs some work.


Ah, right. Sorry, missed that. I have to caveat first, that it has been a while since I have had any Dendrobates (the genus) breeding, so take what I say with a grain of salt. If you follow what I was saying and keep the water level at the base of the eggs (leaving the tops of the eggs clear to breathe), the tads should have no trouble wiggling into the deeper water. You need to keep an eye on them, though, and pull them out and into separate containers when you see that they have hatched. They aren't going to cannibalize each other right away, but no reason to take chances. I have never had a tad of any species strand itself in any dry areas. However, my eggs are almost always laid on butter lids (under coco huts) or in film canisters, so the surface is flat. I can control the water level to the point where there is no dry land. A piece of leaf probably won't cooperate in terms of allowing you to get the water level such that it covers all dry areas without covering the eggs. I think you will still be ok, though. I think the tads sense gravity and will go down toward the water. Keep an eye on them, though, I could be wrong.

Mark


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## Ravage (Feb 5, 2016)

I thought I had pics of this very scenario, but I can't find them. (fail) So Thanks to the trickery of photoshop I have made an illustration of what Mark was talking about. I don't use butter lids, but petri dishes (being the guy with all the petri dishes).
The first photo is a cluster of D. tinctorius eggs on a leaf (Bird's nest fern).
The second photo is how I keep them in the dishes to "hatching". These pre emergence tads have been submerged about 3mm in water through their entire development. It is vitally import not to "drown" the eggs by full submersion. Keep the water level about half-way up the gel clump. This is enough water for them to emerge into.
The third photo is a mock up of how I have cut a section of leaf and put it in a petri dish and raised the water level up to the same relative height.

The dishes are great because they have covers that will keep the eggs clean, reduce evaporation, but still allow a small amount of gas exchange.


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## tangled (May 13, 2019)

Ok, and for a newbie following this thread - can we take it farther... Once the eggs do hatch what is the continued care most of you do? On Josh's Frogs instructional videos, he says that once they hatch, they should stay in that petri dish for "a few days" and then transfer to a cup where they still won't eat for a "few days." 1) are they too fragile to transfer right when they hatch the egg? 2) how many day is a few days? or how do you know when to start feeding them?" 3) Josh says to just top off water as it evaporates, but a lot of the YouTubers change water and I've read of people doing water changes ranging from never, weekly, or even daily. Let along the guys who said up misting systems that constantly flush the water...So how often should the water changed outside of when you can smell that it's 'bad'?


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

tangled said:


> Ok, and for a newbie following this thread - can we take it farther... Once the eggs do hatch what is the continued care most of you do? On Josh's Frogs instructional videos, he says that once they hatch, they should stay in that petri dish for "a few days" and then transfer to a cup where they still won't eat for a "few days." 1) are they too fragile to transfer right when they hatch the egg? 2) how many day is a few days? or how do you know when to start feeding them?" 3) Josh says to just top off water as it evaporates, but a lot of the YouTubers change water and I've read of people doing water changes ranging from never, weekly, or even daily. Let along the guys who said up misting systems that constantly flush the water...So how often should the water changed outside of when you can smell that it's 'bad'?


I imediatly put the tadpoles in a cup of water with an oak leaf and some moss after they hatch. I feed not for the first 5 days, after this every 2 days one Hikari Koi staple (for dendrobates). I never change the water, but do a refill if needed. That's it, I raised +250 tadpoles this year on this method.


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## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Good questions!
I don't leave my tads in the dish on purpose, but I only check on them every other day when I feed, so they could be in there for up to 2 days just based on the rhythm of how I do things. I don't keep much water in with the eggs, so it isn't probably good for my tads to have to hang in that little water depth for all that long. I will pull them immediately if I see that they have hatched. I feed them a little bit right away, but Josh's is probably right that they aren't real hungry right away because they have been metabolizing their tail. 

You will find a lot of opinions on whether to do water changes or not. I tend not to do them unless the cup looks especially foul. Opinions vary a lot on this, but my experience has been that tads seem very resistant to nitrogen and other by-products that build-up over the course of the aquatic phase of the morphing process. One other thing that you didn't mention but that probably should be addressed in this context is tadpole tea/adding leaves to the water. I only do this for terrestrial species like Dendrobates (the genus), but some folks do it for all of their tads. Especially for Ranitomeya, my reasoning is that if you are laying in broms for the most part, the water is probably getting flushed regularly by rainwater. Again, other people may have different opinions.

Mark


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## tangled (May 13, 2019)

Encyclia said:


> Good questions!
> I don't leave my tads in the dish on purpose, but I only check on them every other day when I feed, so they could be in there for up to 2 days just based on the rhythm of how I do things. I don't keep much water in with the eggs, so it isn't probably good for my tads to have to hang in that little water depth for all that long. I will pull them immediately if I see that they have hatched. I feed them a little bit right away, but Josh's is probably right that they aren't real hungry right away because they have been metabolizing their tail.
> 
> You will find a lot of opinions on whether to do water changes or not. I tend not to do them unless the cup looks especially foul. Opinions vary a lot on this, but my experience has been that tads seem very resistant to nitrogen and other by-products that build-up over the course of the aquatic phase of the morphing process. One other thing that you didn't mention but that probably should be addressed in this context is tadpole tea/adding leaves to the water. I only do this for terrestrial species like Dendrobates (the genus), but some folks do it for all of their tads. Especially for Ranitomeya, my reasoning is that if you are laying in broms for the most part, the water is probably getting flushed regularly by rainwater. Again, other people may have different opinions.
> ...


The Tads I've got right now are Epipedobates anthonyii Santa Isabel. I have not been adding tadpole Tea but have been putting an almond leaf piece in. I've lost 5 of 7 tads this week. Temperature might be an issue because my office is OLD and drafty and we were down to 30 outside and the heater can't keep up so temps are in the mid to high 60s in the small hours of the morning. I'm going to get a radiant heater today because I just got a huge clutch of eggs that are all eggs w/ tails. I had purchased Tads (D. auratus) online that are bigger and doing fine though. One has left the water, all the others still only have hind legs.

So... Tadpole tea is recommended for "real" then?


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

tangled said:


> The Tads I've got right now are Epipedobates anthonyii Santa Isabel. I have not been adding tadpole Tea but have been putting an almond leaf piece in. I've lost 5 of 7 tads this week. Temperature might be an issue because my office is OLD and drafty and we were down to 30 outside and the heater can't keep up so temps are in the mid to high 60s in the small hours of the morning. I'm going to get a radiant heater today because I just got a huge clutch of eggs that are all eggs w/ tails. I had purchased Tads (D. auratus) online that are bigger and doing fine though. One has left the water, all the others still only have hind legs.
> 
> So... Tadpole tea is recommended for "real" then?


I would not use tadpole tea. In the past, I found the best way for raising anthonyii was using running water. I also gave them Algae tabs.


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