New arrivals.

[Buck Rogers]

Do you have photo's of the set-up you keeping them in or can you describe to me how you are housing them (trying to get different ideas). You know that trunking (sorry don't know if it is an international or South African word) that you use to house cables? I have being using that as a hide for them, its like a PVC tube except square and they love to all squeeze into that. But it amazes me how they come running out whenever I throw in some fruit flies.

Kurt have you heard any of them calling yet? They have a beautiful whistle when they call that is amazing.

[Kurt]

I have not heard any calling from them yet. I did have a listen to a WAV file of microps, so I am assuming bifasciatus may have similar call.
They are kept in a large critter keeper in which I have made a false bottom. (See my red-eye article on how to make a false bottom) The substrate is sphagnum over "hydro-balls" or LECA. They have a few plastic plants and a PVC cap with holes drilled it, it serves as a hide box, they barely use it these days. There is a water bowl with a fake plant in it. Thats pretty much it.

[Buck Rogers]

I have had trouble in the past with false bottoms, but in all fairness I did not construct it properly. This weekend I am putting their cage together, I am using a 2ft fish tank and will have perlite at the bottom with screen mesh over the perlite, then I will pile a mixture of local sands (sandy type soil) and peat moss together and pile it on top of the mesh, using a normal ceramic water bowl, and will add some water plants and a fern with some logs. I am not keen to add the logs as I fear they wil spend too much time buried under the logs but will try this for a week or so and see how it goes.

How does that sound to you?

[Kurt]

I would think it would work. I use shpagnum as a substrate, which is impossible for these frogs to swallow. I do have reservations about using any sand. If these frogs naturally occur in this type of soil, then I feel it should be ok for them in captivity.

[Buck Rogers]

Hi Kurt

I wanted to give you an update of my banded frogs on this side. A week ago I took a 2foot fishtank with a vented lid and converted it to their new viv. I mixed a ration of 50-50 top soil and play pen sand with water and then added 1/3 peat moss and mixed it all together. I placed a layer of perlite on the bottom and then covered it with screen mesh and then piled the soil mix on top of that. Added a normal house fern and a log and a water bowl with some stones around it and some sphagnum moss to the set up and here is a pic of their enviroment:



Sorry if the pic is not 100% clear but it gives a clear indication of what I am talking about.

So far this has proved really successful, I have the 3 females in here at the moment and want to fatten the males up a bit before moving them over, but they have made good use of their enviroment. They have burrowed under the log and wedge themselves in the grooves of the log as well which is a great start. I added an extra heating pad to get the temps to mid 20 degress celcius (metric sorry) and this has pumped up their activity. Reason why I did this is because coming into summer they would experience extremely high day time temps and cooler night time temps so trying my best to recreat this as possible.

Last week we had some small rains and straight away all three females were in the water bowl waiting, so this to me indicates that already they may be ready for mating and want to get the males up to a decent size to see if anything happens. The other night I was sure that I heard one of the males calling but couldn't be sure, have you heard yours calling?

[Kurt]

Not at all, but I am hoping once I throw them in a rain chamber for a few days that will change. I lost one recently. I notice when I fed them that one was having trouble trying to catch food. The tongue barely came out of it's mouth, so I made up a slurry with a vitamin supplement, vitamin A being one of them. I administered it to the frog, but a few days later I found him dead. I am hoping it was a vitamin A deficiency as I first suspected and not something else that will end up killing the other frogs.

[Buck Rogers]

I'm so sorry to hear about the loss Kurt, I lost a Tokay Gecko this weekend after I bought it malnourished and dehydrated from a neglecting pet shop in an attempt to save it - I know its a stupid thing to do.

Last night we had our first Summer thunder storms in the Highveld and man alive they came down hard!!! I missed the frogs enclosure quite heavily last night but they seemed irritated with the water, I would like to see if you experience this same thing when you put yours in the rain chamber. The temperature dropped very low today so I kept their viv cooler as well just to try keep it as natural as possible outside.

[Kurt]

I'm so sorry to hear about the loss Kurt, I lost a Tokay Gecko this weekend after I bought it malnourished and dehydrated from a neglecting pet shop in an attempt to save it - I know its a stupid thing to do.

Your heart was in the right place.

Thanks. I watched them eat last night one was a little reluctant to eat, but it did eat. The crickets were heavily duested with vitamins and calcium, so I at least got some nutrition in him/her. My original and my biggest went to town of the crickets.

[Buck Rogers]

That's great, what size crickets are yours on?

[Kurt]

1/8". They are also eating fruit flies and bean weevils.

[Buck Rogers]

Hi Kurt, an update from my side. Of the 5 that I got earlier this year 2 of the females (the one that lost the foot) have doubled in size and are almost fully grown. The other female is growing a bit slower and the one male is still tiny. But unfortunately I lost one of the small males, he was looking very sluggish and skinny a few weeks back, so I isolated him in a separate tub and started feeding him, he started feeding nicely and gaining some healthy weight, but in the last week he suddenly lost a lot of weight around his limbs and was very weak and wouldn't even flick his tongue out at any food infront of him, and on Sunday morning I came in to see him dead. Could not tell you why he died, the other frogs are fine so was not a virus or any illnesses, I think it was nothing more than weak genes, he wasn't growing from when I first got him and the others had already grown 5x larger. Sad to have lost him as I had so much faith and hope when he started coming right.

[Kurt]

I still have three out of the original 5. One of those three being my original male (assuming he's male because of his size) whom I have had for two+ years. The other two I assume are females. One is quite large, fat, with good color. The other is a little thinner, but no dangerously so. Her color is a bit on the faded side. I should also mention the original frog also has good color and good body weight. All three feed well. I have not attempted to breed these frogs as of yet.