# Frog sitting in Repashy gecko food?



## lork-the-mighty (May 11, 2021)

Just caught my leucomelas sitting in the mourning gecko's food dish, is this okay? I sprayed him off a little afterwards just in case.


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

lork-the-mighty said:


> Just caught my leucomelas sitting in the mourning gecko's food dish, is this okay? I sprayed him off a little afterwards just in case.
> View attachment 300312


One more reason not to mix dart frogs and mourning geckos...


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## bulbophyllum (Feb 6, 2012)

I'm sure it will be fine.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Leave it to a leuc..


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## Bunsincunsin (Feb 11, 2008)

Is there a water dish that's accessible to the frogs in the enclosure? If not, that may be why the frog was sitting in the dish.


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## JasonE (Feb 7, 2011)

fishingguy12345 said:


> One more reason not to mix dart frogs and mourning geckos...


How did this become a thing? I don't remember this bad practice being so widespread in the hobby before


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

I think they just hop around and you happened to catch this one in the slop. I don’t believe it indicates a need for a water dish. 

I keep bait stations in my vivs, and sometimes it gets soupy and I’ve seen frogs accidentally step in it. With my setups, I worry about bacterial infections since the bait stations are literally rotting fruit. For that reason, I try to keep them from getting too goopy.

In your circumstances, this would be a fresh slurry so I wouldn’t worry about infection risk. That said, the general recommendation is not to mix herp species. And the frogs will track the gecko food all around.


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## Tijl (Feb 28, 2019)

JasonE said:


> How did this become a thing? I don't remember this bad practice being so widespread in the hobby before


Unfortunately this is more than just common in europe.. So is mixing multiple species and keeping frogs in oversatured enclosures. 

Finding herps that are kept the correct way seem to be the rare case here..


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

JasonE said:


> How did this become a thing? I don't remember this bad practice being so widespread in the hobby before


Doesn't help that one major retailers in the USA actively promotes keeping geckos and frogs together on their website...


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## bulbophyllum (Feb 6, 2012)

I'm not suggesting keeping MG's with dart frogs is a good practice. 

But, aside from the obvious really bad ideas like a terribilis eating a baby gecko or a gecko eating a baby Ranitomeya has anyone experienced issues with these set ups? I'm not talking about what could happen. But, real negative experiences.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Its extremely irritating. The azureus with the "gecko buddy" by his side.

Its chilling generally to see the science of marketing in operation. Always dumbing down, because it takes less energy and time to support people in learning a beautiful, ever expanding discipline that can enrich a lifetime.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Edited. Unnecessary.


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## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

bulbophyllum said:


> I'm not suggesting keeping MG's with dart frogs is a good practice.
> 
> But, aside from the obvious really bad ideas like a terribilis eating a baby gecko or a gecko eating a baby Ranitomeya has anyone experienced issues with these set ups? I'm not talking about what could happen. But, real negative experiences.


My motivation for not mixing is 
1) Almost any viv is WAY too small to offer temp/humidity/social gradients for 2 different herps. I'm guessing the negative effects here would be difficult to isolate and specifically pin on "mixing." Similar to the incredibly common posts we see here where someone is keeping too many frogs in too small/wet/whatever conditions, and "suddenly" 1 of the frogs is sick/swollen/skinny and we all try to help and it dies the next day. Hard to say exactly which variable killed that frog. 

2) Novel pathogens. I understand the concept here, and keeping 2 different herps in a (relatively) small space would increase the likelihood. But I also don't think it's the boogieman we make it out to be, and reason #1 is enough. 

BUT, I do like the practical approach here- looking for actual bad experiences vs theory. Especially since we all hound it so hard.


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## Chris S (Apr 12, 2016)

bulbophyllum said:


> I'm not suggesting keeping MG's with dart frogs is a good practice.
> 
> But, aside from the obvious really bad ideas like a terribilis eating a baby gecko or a gecko eating a baby Ranitomeya has anyone experienced issues with these set ups? I'm not talking about what could happen. But, real negative experiences.


I doubt there are too many negative experiences with keeping these less aggressive eaters...tincs/leucs/galacs, with mourning gecko's. I'm not a fan myself, but I can see the draw. I can't seem them really harming each other to be honest. Maybe some baby mourning gecko's get eaten. 

Even if there was, people are less inclined to share because they get crucified for them, haha.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Dont mind me im a cranky old stegasaurus


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## JasonE (Feb 7, 2011)

Chris S said:


> I doubt there are too many negative experiences with keeping these less aggressive eaters...tincs/leucs/galacs, with mourning gecko's. I'm not a fan myself, but I can see the draw. I can't seem them really harming each other to be honest. Maybe some baby mourning gecko's get eaten.
> 
> Even if there was, people are less inclined to share because they get crucified for them, haha.


This is the thing. No one broadcasts their failures. And since most of the herp hobby in general frowns on mixing species, people who do it aren't going to tell people when it fails. What we know is even species that need similar environments can have special needs that conflict with the other's needs. We know there is absolutely no enclosure being used by the people who do mix that is big enough for two separate species. You never see the people who mix show an image of their 8x4x4' enclosure. It's always here are my 3 frogs and 2 day geckos in this small exo-terra or 20 gallon aquarium.

If anyone wants more info on novel pathogens, I suggest you go search for all of Ed's comments on it. As a matter of fact, just go read every single response Ed has ever said on this board.


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## SpaceMan (Aug 25, 2013)

Broseph said:


> My motivation for not mixing is
> 1) Almost any viv is WAY too small to offer temp/humidity/social gradients for 2 different herps.


I think this is the big one. Even if you have a 200 gallon, or bookcase-sized enclosure for your animals, it's still a tiny compared to their natural habitat. It would be unlikely that you'd find two different species like this cohabitating in such a small area in nature.


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

@Bunsincunsin Hey Shawn, I have given Darts small replaceable, shallow water - these were chosen carefully and kept constantly flushed and refreshed.

it can lead to complacency and can be heavy handidly applied but, though said to be unnesseary I personally like the uptake provision of a cleanly contained shallow. Im very controlling about water, though. 

Maybe hes getting a sugar hi. Lol


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## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

bulbophyllum said:


> But, aside from the obvious really bad ideas like a terribilis eating a baby gecko or a gecko eating a baby Ranitomeya has anyone experienced issues with these set ups? I'm not talking about what could happen. But, real negative experiences.


Part of the resistance to mixing species is not that we're trying to avoid bad outcomes -- death, disease -- but promote good ones: 

-- animals using their enclosures completely and well (e.g. not restricted to the only warm dry spot in a cool moist tank; being able to choose any decent spot to spend the night instead of trying to find the one tiny spot that the F'ing geckos don't tromp all over all night long), 

--animals exhibiting behavior that isn't modified by being forced to live way too close to a microhabitat-sharing species,

-- keepers being able to design an enclosure for the benefit of one species (which is already quite challenging enough, given the limits of captivity) rather than designing one that "will work" for two, or more,

and so on. Even if it doesn't look like mixing species causes harm, it sure doesn't advantage either species that are forced to live together, so from an animal husbandry POV there isn't any motivation at all to do it.


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## BillJohnson78 (Jun 18, 2021)

Looks to be using it as a hydration source


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

There is the categorizing of the animals into convenient Slots of environment stratosphere.."this guy stays on the ground level, the other guy is going to live up there" and "whilst this guy is sleeping, the other guy will be active.."
But I have found behaviors to not fit into slots like that. It is plastic.

And unless people see them in overt conflict, or eating each other they dismiss or dont fathom the awareness of the mixed subjects living in proxy with no option to self locate to another place.


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## bulbophyllum (Feb 6, 2012)

Kmc said:


> And unless people see them in overt conflict, or eating each other they dismiss or don't fathom the awareness of the mixed subjects living in proxy with no option to self locate to another place.


I would assume that all of our frogs, given the choice, would self locate out of captivity. We keep them in glass boxes for our amusement. We strive to provide them the best environments we can provide. Why do we assume that the presents of a morning gecko is more stressful then a rival male or female in a group of frogs?


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## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

The but their in a glass box anyway so.. is a straw man.

One goal of herpetoculture is to learn ways to create as much of a cultured equation of what is reality for the subject, in a captive system that we can.

One of the factors that make this possible inmo, is that reptiles and amphibian behavior is strongly cue oriented. Replicating cues is possible and becoming more so.

Having different animals together creates even more novel conditions in the glass box.

Perhaps after time there is desensitization.

Im not interested in watching behaviors affected by that, either.

I dont really have an answer about what is more stressful, a rival frog or a mourning gecko, because Im not interested in that. I am interested in learning how to minimize as many novel stressors in an environment as I can because thats what I want to look at.


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## OMF0820 (Jun 27, 2021)

JasonE said:


> How did this become a thing? I don't remember this bad practice being so widespread in the hobby before


Im brand new, but josh's frogs seems to put them together when you look at their deals. I was under the impression they made good tank mates, to the point I was considering getting some.... but reading this has me questioning that now. Here I was thinking I had done more than enough research.


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## fishingguy12345 (Apr 7, 2019)

OMF0820 said:


> Im brand new, but josh's frogs seems to put them together when you look at their deals. I was under the impression they made good tank mates, to the point I was considering getting some.... but reading this has me questioning that now. Here I was thinking I had done more than enough research.


They aren't good tank mates. 

One should always be weary of "deals" put together by vendors. Their interest inevitably leans towards selling you things whether it's a good husbandry practice or not.


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## DendroJoris (Apr 13, 2021)

OMF0820 said:


> Here I was thinking I had done more than enough research.


Research is never over. New insights are provided on a daily basis. Husbandry practices are changed according to this. There is never a perfect way of keeping frogs (doing anything in that regard). To me that's a big part of what draws me to this hobby. 

What I've learned along the way is that sellers/stores aren't good sources and common sense goes a long way. I think the majority of caresheets online are lacklustre at best and always state the bare minimum. Reddit is also one of the worst sources, lots of people join r/vivarium or r/dartfrogs and give advice based on what the reader wants to hear to get upvotes and portray themselves as so called 'experts'.


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