Mantellas

[birdsflybackwards]

That's quite a Mantella collection. Have you had much success breeding them to date?

Currently I have about 25 Mantella crocea tads in the water. The crocea group is still young but produced three clutches since I received them in June. The first two clutches were bad but the third one had a good amount of fertile eggs.

The viridis I have had for a year, they laid two bad clutches last year but have not done anything since. The ebenaui I got last year turned out to be all females, so I got 4 unsexed ebenaui at the end of July. The group was introduced about a month ago and there has been a lot of calling and one of the females looks to be gravid, so we'll see.

YouTube - Mantella crocea tads

[John]

I'm in awe. Particularly since you're still so young and have accomplished things most of us will never. Thank you for the video. I am curious about the tadpoles - just how big are they and how large are they before metamorphosis?

[John]

Actually, what colour are your adults?

[Tom Highum]

Very impressive.

[birdsflybackwards]

I'm in awe. Particularly since you're still so young and have accomplished things most of us will never. Thank you for the video. I am curious about the tadpoles - just how big are they and how large are they before metamorphosis?

Right now they are somewhere in between Gosner stages 27 and 33 (there's a lot of variation within the group) so according to Mantellas by Mark Staniszewski they are less than 25 mm in length. I'm guessing the average in this group is about 20mm based on this information. I'm not sure how big they will be when they metamorphose out, but Milotynpanum is the smallest known species of Mantella and they morph out around 4mm, while viridis morph out around 12mm. Crocea are closer in size to milotympanum so if I had to guess I'd say 6-9mm if we assume that tads morph out proportional to their adult size.

The adults are F1's from Devins frogs so they look pretty much identical to the pictures on Mantella Frogs. I'll try to get a decent pic of mine soon, because their flashmarks are pretty impressive for CB frogs.

[John]

Again, very informative, thank you Emily. I am impressed with your photography too - it's not easy to photograph these small, active frogs - I speak from experience .

[John]

Actually, one more question for you - what is the grey layer above the LECA in your planted vivarium photo?

[Mike]

Actually, one more question for you - what is the grey layer above the LECA in your planted vivarium photo?

sodium bentonite

[birdsflybackwards]

Actually, one more question for you - what is the grey layer above the LECA in your planted vivarium photo?

The substrate is a mix of flourite, leaf litter, peat, coco husk, and sphagnum. I think the grey you are seeing is the condensation from the drainage layer that I couldn't reach when I wiped the glass down to take the photo.

The background is sodium bentonite, but it doesn't really look grey because its mixed in with peat, flourite,and LECA dust.

[John]

Thanks for answering that. Have you sculpted the sodium bentonite? How did you do that and what kind of paint did you use?