Poison Dart Frogs!

[goods]

Along with orchids, these little guys are a hobby of mine. I've got about 10 tanks of them right now with different species/locales in each. These are just a few pictures of them I had that I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

[/url] IMAG0161 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] IMAG0160 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] IMAG0157 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] IMG_0661 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] IMAG0151 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] IMAG0012 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url] IMG_0541 by goods82, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[hcarlton]

Really liking the last one, with the bright turquoise. Not a color often seen in nature.

 

[Kramer Chids]

Those are beautiful.

 

[Lizardom]

very, very cool.. what do you feed them?

 

[goods]

very, very cool.. what do you feed them?

Flightless fruitflies are the staple but also various isopods, springtails, bean beetles. Some people also feed pea aphids, mites, and booklice.

 

[swords]

Excellent! I've always wanted to do PDFs but been worried about the 80*F "heat limit". Most of my terrariums get higher than that if i don't have cool air pumped into em.

 

[cp777]

Sooo cute!

 

[Cthulhu138]

I used to breed thousands of Poison Dart frogs, I had over 200 pairs/breeding groups. It's nice to see that the Varadero imitators are more available. They were extremely rare when I was in the hobby. I think I paid $700.00 for my pair and they were more than likely smuggled in. Good thing they were prolific breeders. I can only assume Mark Pepper played a big hand in getting these frogs established. I miss keeping them sometimes................. until I think about the 200+ fruitfly cultures I had to make every week.

Love the pic of the P.vitattus carrying tadpoles too. Great shot.

 

[cody]

those are awesome. the only thing stopping me from keeping pdf is the whole fruitfly thing. i'll stick with my snakes that eat f/t, lol.

 

[goods]

Excellent! I've always wanted to do PDFs but been worried about the 80*F "heat limit". Most of my terrariums get higher than that if i don't have cool air pumped into em.

I wouldn't necessarily call 80F the "heat limit", but you don't want to go too high over that. Last summer, my A/C failed while I was gone for the weekend, and it got to 96F in the frog room. Thankfully, all of them were ok. What causes your tanks to get so hot? I keep my house thermostat set around 78 during the summer, and my tanks still don't really go above 82F.

I used to breed thousands of Poison Dart frogs, I had over 200 pairs/breeding groups. It's nice to see that the Varadero imitators are more available. They were extremely rare when I was in the hobby. I think I paid $700.00 for my pair and they were more than likely smuggled in. Good thing they were prolific breeders. I can only assume Mark Pepper played a big hand in getting these frogs established. I miss keeping them sometimes................. until I think about the 200+ fruitfly cultures I had to make every week.

Love the pic of the P.vitattus carrying tadpoles too. Great shot.

What species/locales did you keep? The ones above with the red head are actually Ranitomeya benedicta. They're similar to the R. fantastica that Veradero imitators mimic. A friend of mine has the Veradero imis, and they're awesome litle frogs as well. The tadpole shot is my Hyloxalus azureiventris, like vitattus, it's underappreciated because they're such prolific breeders. These are a little less worked with also because females are so rare in this country. Amazingly, he carried around those tadpoles for almost 3 whole days!

 

[Cthulhu138]

At my departure from the hobby, R.benedicta hadn't been described yet and was still considered a form of R.fantastica (then, R.fantasticus). It's interesting that after all these years H.azureiventris females are still so scarce. At my time in the hobby there were only like 3 known to exist in collections in the U.S. and they were old and seldomly bred successfully. New imports were just starting to come in when I sold off the collection.

To the best of my recollection, here's a rough list of what I kept and bred:

Adelphobates :
castaneonicus
galactonotus - Moon Shine
galactonotus - Red
galactonotus - Yellow

Amreega:
trivittata - Red
trivitatta - Yellow
trivittata - Green

Dendrobates :
auratus - Reticulated
auratus - Hawaiian
auratus - Costa Rican
auratus - Panama Blue
auratus - Black
auratus - Kuna Yala
auratus - Camoflage
auratus - Darien Gap
auratus - Bocas Del Toro
auratus - Forget the locale, it was a Mountain. Beautiful big metallic blue frogs.
leucomelas - Standard
leucomelas - Chocolate
leucomelas - Albino
tinctoruis - Formerly azureus
tinctorius - Sipalawini Blue
tinctorius - Sipalawini Green
tinctorius - French Guyana
tinctorius - Alanis
tinctorius - Infer-Alanis
tinctorius - Patricia
tinctorius - Lorenzo
tinctorius - Bakuis
tinctorius - Surinam Cobalt
tinctorius - Weygoldt
tinctorius - Saul Yellow Back
tinctorius - Giant Orange
tinctorius - Regina
tinctorius - Oyapoque
tinctorius - Brazilian Yellow Head
tinctorius - Citronella
truncatus - Yellow
truncatus - green

Epipedobates:
anthonyii
tricolor

Hyloaxlus :
azureiventris - 2 Males

Oophaga :
arborea - Red
histrionica
pumilo - Cayo De agua
pumilio - Bastimentos - Several varieties
pumilio - Mann Creek/Alimirante
pumilio - Bocas Del Toro
pumilio - Darkland
pumilio - Colon
pumilio - San Cristobal
pumilio - Bri Bri
pumilio - Pope Island
pumilio - Escudo de Veraguas
pumilio - Rio Branco
sylvatica


Phyllobates :
bicolor
lugubris
terribilis - Mint Green
terribilis - Yellow
terribilis - Orange
vitattus

Ranitomeya :
amazonica - 2 Different lines
fantastica - Standard
fantastica - Yellow ( which were ironically red)
imitator - Standard
imitator - Tarapoto
imitator - Intermedius
imitator - Varadero
lamasi - Standard
lamasi - Panguana
lamasi - Red/Orange
reticulata
ventrimaculatus - Yellow
ventrimaculatus - Red - Todd Kelly Line
ventrimaculatus - Red - German Line

I know I'm forgetting some, especially auratus, tinctorius, ventrimaculatus and pumilio.

 

[goods]

Wow! That's a really impressive list. I'd love to have the opportunity to work with some of those, especially some of the obligates and standard lamasi (now sirensis) Do you remember which histrionicus and sylvatica you had? I have a single sub-adult red head. Very cool frog but I only see it about once a month, unfortunately. The auratus mountain locale you mentioned may have been El Cope. That's what I have pictured, and I know they come from higher elevations in Panama.

I think more H. azureiventris came in with Sean Stewart's INIBICO import. I got mine from someone selling their collection, but I think they're originally from that import. It's believed that high temperatures when raising tads leads to male heavy clutches. I'm raising all of my current tads in a poorly insulated room, so it stays in the 60s usually. Hopefully, that I can raise up some females.

Were you ever a member of Dendroboard? Thanks for the list, and feel free to add your pictures here if you would like!

 

[Cthulhu138]

Neither the histrionicus or the sylvaticus had locale data on them. The histrionicus were blue and a smokey silvery blackish brown and the sylvaticus were yellow and dark brown. The auratus weren't the El Cope. They were huge for an auratus, tinctorius sized frogs. Their pattern looked like the small reticulated variety only metallic sea green/blue instead of green.

I definitely witnessed temperature dependant sexing going on with my Phyllobates and Epipedobates froglets. It makes sense that H.azureiventris would be the same way given how closely they are related. When I got my H.azureiventris it was still classified as an Epipedobates. Sean's INIBICO imports rings a distinct bell. All of that was just starting when I bailed on the hobby.

I was a member of Dendroboard but, wasn't very active on there. I would sell my surplus froglets on there once in a while. Especially the thumbnail species and pricier tinctorius and obligate egg feeders that my wholesale customers wouldn't touch.

Here's a few pics that somehow survived through the years :

Dendrobates leucomelas

Ranitomeya sirensis (Formerly Standard lamasi)

Oophaga pumilio - Cayo de Agua

Oophaga pumilio - Colon

Oophaga pumilio - Bri Bri

 

[Cthulhu138]

Excellent! I've always wanted to do PDFs but been worried about the 80*F "heat limit". Most of my terrariums get higher than that if i don't have cool air pumped into em.

Don't believe everything you read on these guys Josh. Mine were in the 90's and above for most of July and August every year. Some became inactive during this time and would hide in crevices and burrows at the bottom of the terrariums and others slowed their breeding down a bit but, I've never lost a frog due to the high summer temps.

 

[kulamauiman]

I though the heat was beneficial to treating chtridiomycosis?

 

[amphirion]

they also recently discovered crayfish/crustaceans as a potential vector for chytrid and allows it to persist long after amphibians have been wiped out.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/121217-chytrid-fungus-amphibian-frog-crayfish-science/

 

[RL7836]

Noob alert - would any of the higher-elevation species do well in a HL greenhouse (like in Paul's - Whimgrinder)?

 

[Cthulhu138]

I know for s fact that Epipedobates tricolor do very well in greenhouses as I'm sure many more do as well. Especially the smaller "thumbnail" species.

 

[goods]

The histrionicus you describe sound interesting. The big Oophaga are pretty rare these days, so hearing accounts of them being kept are always interesting to me. Did they ever breed for you? I've never seen an auratus like you describe, probably one of the many lost to popularity swings. There aren't many keeping the less common auratus now, even the Costa Rican greens aren't offered for sale much. Thanks for the pictures!

The 80F heat ceiling has a lot to do with people keeping totally sealed enclosures. They often experience 90+F in nature, but they take advantage of evaporative cooling and find cooler niches within their habitat. Mine survived the high temps I think because all of my tanks are vented to fresh air. I think chytrid is killed above 85F or something close to that, but I've never heard or read of chytrid as a proven reason a collection was lost. New imports sometimes test positive for it, but they are treated with antifungals while in quarantine. The crawfish as a vector is still being debated, but many amphibians are unaffected by the fungus but serve as vectors to keep it going during dry seasons or after it wipes out a specific population...red eye tree frogs, green tree frogs, and I think even bull frogs can be vectors.

As long as the greenhouse was escape proof and the frogs had access to sufficient food, I think they'd do great in one. Species like tricolor, the highland morph of anthonyi, H. azureiventris, and many of the riverine Ameerega come to mind as candidates. The Atlanta Botanic Gardens has E. tricolor free roaming in their cloudforest exhibit.

 

[DragonsEye]

Cute lil devils. I've always liked them but have never tried them -- bit beyond my finances and I'm already way short on space as it.