# Showing members Phyllobates bicolor Uraba



## cobra_gerard (Apr 29, 2007)

Hello, I am wondering how many people are keeping these beautiful frogs. I have F1 frogs from Tesoros line and want to show my frogs in this topic. Maybe other members can show there frogs so we can see the differences of them.


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## tachikoma (Apr 16, 2009)

One of my uraba from the first Tesoros shipment available here in the US. Still have them going strong I have a group of 5.


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## Fahad (Aug 25, 2019)

They're beautiful frogs, but photos of them are all over the place; I find it hard to pin down what a typical specimen would look like. Some of them appear to have more blue-ish green with variable hues from yellow to orange. Are they just a highly variable species or am I just seeing differences in photography?


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## tachikoma (Apr 16, 2009)

They are usually more yellow by default but they will very easily color up towards orange if you use a good carotenoid supplement. I find many keepers don't like to supplement with carotenoids on them because they prefer to keep their more yellow appearance. If I feed a heavy fatty meal with a good dusting of carotenoids like waxworms I notice they will turn very orange. I think the fat content helps them to absorb more of the carotenoids which explains the more noticeable result. Here is an example a few days after a heavy wax worm meal dusted with quality carotenoids.


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## tachikoma (Apr 16, 2009)

Here is the same frog shortly after receiving him before he was given carotenoid dusted food. 









Here you can see shortly after supplementation started. Notice he is starting to color more orange and in the bg you can see one that had not been supplemented yet as he was a newer purchase that was later added to the group is much more yellow still.


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## Fahad (Aug 25, 2019)

@tachikoma thanks for the info. It's interesting because they seem to be dramatically affected by carotenoid supplementation; I have a group of Yellow terribilis for example, that did intensify in colour a bit but the hue didn't tilt towards orange like that.

There is some variability in orange intensity found in Blackfoot Orange terribilis, but lack of carotenoids won't skew them towards yellow.


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## tachikoma (Apr 16, 2009)

Fahad said:


> @tachikoma thanks for the info. It's interesting because they seem to be dramatically affected by carotenoid supplementation; I have a group of Yellow terribilis for example, that did intensify in colour a bit but the hue didn't tilt towards orange like that.
> 
> There is some variability in orange intensity found in Blackfoot Orange terribilis, but lack of carotenoids won't skew them towards yellow.


Jeremey Mott over at JL Exotics was the first person who brought it to my attention. I purchased my Tesoros frogs via him and he warned me to be careful with carotenoid supplementation on these guys if I wanted to keep them their lemon yellow as they seem to color up very fast and easily.

Some additional observations from my group. 
While the color will fade if you don't supplement for a while, it never goes back to the pure lemon yellow they had at the start.
The color will peak a couple of days after supplementation and will deepen to a much richer color if given with a fatty meal. 
You can actually see the orange color start to appear in koi fish like splotches at first and over several days will diffuse out to a uniform orange color.


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## cobra_gerard (Apr 29, 2007)

Good to read these reactions. I want to keep my lemon color so I know now how to do that.


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## Fahad (Aug 25, 2019)

@tachikoma I should have asked earlier -- are you using Naturerose or SuperPig ... ?


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## tachikoma (Apr 16, 2009)

Fahad said:


> @tachikoma I should have asked earlier -- are you using Naturerose or SuperPig ... ?


I actually make my own blend by buying the carotenoids directly. I used superpig in the past but never noticed any difference with it and I also tried the Ranarium carotenoid plus but every frog in my collection hates it and spits out food dusted with it so that led me to just designing my own mix.

I use a mix of astaxanthin, canthaxanthin, zeaxanthin, naturerose, and spirulina powder. The spirulina is in there just because I have so much of it for tads that I'll never use it all, so I figured why not add a trace amount of protein to the supplement. 

So far with this mix I have had great success coloring up my frogs and they don't seem to mind the taste either. Below are a couple more examples with my blackfoots, and solid orange galacts.


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## Nubster (Jun 16, 2008)

Hoping to get a nice group of these for my upcoming 120g vivarium.


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