In our hobby, we are turning natural selection upside down. Instead of one frog eating his brothers and sisters, we let them all live. Then we get rid of all the predators, (over)feed them, relentlessly clean their water, and give them a stable temperature to develop. We make it so the vast majority of eggs laid in our hobby turn into frogs that are bred and produce offspring for this hobby.

I think there are a lot of frogs in our hobby that shouldn’t have made the cut. We are watering down the frogs we have by continually adding weak frogs into the system. I have set a few guidelines for my breeding practices in an effort to get rid of some weak frogs while still maintaining the supply I need to make a living.

First off, I have stopped using Methylene Blue on my eggs. If the egg molds then it molds. I’m not babying eggs anymore.

Secondly, I’m not doing any water changes. And I don’t miss it at all. Could our constant water changes be affecting our frogs in the same way too sterile conditions lead to allergies in humans?

Finally, I have created a slope system (see Breeding) where only frogs with the strongest front legs survive. SLS comes in varying degrees, so I want to cull the frogs that show any signs. Could easy access out of the water be a contributing factor to SLS in the fact that frogs don’t need strong legs to get out of our water, so they don’t develop strong front legs?

I welcome your feedback.

Vent Hybrids???

Last year I traded two 2-year-old male Citronella Tincs to a guy for a pair of “blue-legged vents” he had gotten from __________(I won’t use their name and will refer to them as X). After a few months in quarantine I went to the move the frogs to their new home, but instead I found out that one of the frogs had died.

I then began my search for a mate for this frog. Not wanting to mix frogs from different lines, I contacted X (the person who supplied the frogs to the guy I traded with) to find out what line they sold to him. This person patched me to another person they had bought the frogs from. That person could not remember who they got the frogs from.

This got me thinking. Are all “blue-legged vents” from the same line? I asked the question on Dendroboard and got no response. I then posted the same question on Frognet. The only person that responded was Tor Linbo.

He responded back to my question by saying:

I have 3 types of yellow vents... these have little information on where they are from... one from Dutch breeder, years ago, ... another from an animal importer that I think is gone from the hobby... another imported by a reptile breeder who thought he was getting snakes and ended up with frogs... all standard yellows like the ones in Heselhaus... one a little more metallic...

He also referred me to his site www.natures-web.org where he lists 5 different morphs of yellow vents (not including the red vents). Of those five there is two with metallic bronze legs, one with metallic green-blue legs, and two with coppery bronze legs.

Tor sent another email saying:

There are at least 2 more lines in Europe... also an "albino" line that is from Germany that may still be in the US.

Later I bought some vents (never mixed them with the odd vent I already had) from Herpetologic who said his blue vents came from:

My blue leg ventrimaculatus come from a few sources, one is zoo stock and one is a European import.

This research leaves me with a bunch of questions. What is a “blue legged vent”? What is a “gray legged vent”? How many people know which “blue legged vents” they have?

Fighting Free-roaming Fruit Flies

The biggest (and most would argue only) drawback to keeping Dart Frogs is escaped fruit flies. There is nothing worse than feeling a fruit fly crawl over your arm or hear your guests comment on the amount of bugs in your house. There is, however, no reason for your house to be crawling with fruit flies no matter how large or small your Dart Frog collection is. Here is a list of a few things I do to keep down on loose fruit flies.

There is nothing worse than dropping a cup full of fruit flies and have them spill all over your floor. Keep a vacuum or shop vac near your tanks. If you have never dropped a cup of flies, don’t worry. You will someday.

Every time you feed your frogs your flies will make a quick dash towards your light and out every crack, vent, and crevice in your tank. For this reason, I have no vents on any of my tanks (they get air flow when I open them up every day). I also seal the none moving parts of my lids with silicon to keep flies from escaping (especially the aquarium lids that have the plastic back).

I also keep a glass of apple vinegar in my frogroom. The flies flock to this cup and quickly drown. I don’t like the smell of vinegar, so I only put an inch or so of it in the corner and change it weekly.

Finally, I allow free-roaming spiders to set-up webs by my tanks. I wipe away any webs that get in my viewing area, but I allow them to create webs out of plain sight.
If these steps are taken, you will find that you rarely (if ever) see any free-roaming fruit flies. Do you have any methods that I haven’t listed? If so, please shoot me a comment with your techniques.

Vacation

I have decided to do my own Blog. In this blog I want to talk about my take on the care of the poison dart frogs, discuss my take on new trends in the hobby, and talk a little about the business aspects of poison dart frogs and supplies.

I’m on vacation this week, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the hobby on vacation. The first aspect a dart frog keeper needs to worry about is making sure they have enough to feed their frogs when they are gone, but also enough to feed their frogs when they get back. A lot of hobbyists find themselves in the awkward position of not making cultures before they leave and coming back home to find that they are in a fruit fly crisis. I recommend that hobbyists order a few freshly started cultures two weeks before they are planning on getting back (so they are teeming with flies when they get back).

The Second aspect that needs to be taken care of is vacation feeding. There are many options out there, but I prefer to use the easy method. I just take a fruit fly culture, drill a hole in the side, and pop it in the tank. I use older cultures that are near the end of their life so that the frogs aren’t overrun with flies.

The final aspect is someone to care for your frogs. You need someone to check on and feed your eggs/tadpoles if you are going to be gone for more than a few days. In most cases they will need to check temps as well. If a cold front or a heat wave comes while you are gone, you could come home to dead frogs.