Trying a "Natural Selection" Breeding Method

[demon amphibians]

so with all of this said how much water in the tank should be sufficent for one clutch of FBT eggs as well as when they turn into tads? I think my overall water volume is close to two gallons. I need to know this because when my FBT start breeding i will have between 20-25 breeders. I already know i will have to use something much larger or use multiple tanks i just need to know roughly how much water volume to use per breeding pair. i would hate to have over crowding and not be able to move them after its to late.

[Jenste]

My camera is charging but tomorrow I will try and take a video of the tank. It will have to be really early (if I wake up early enough) or later after the sun sets. My livingroom has a large bow front window and it faces the south - any and all sunlight will cause a slight glare.

[fish4all]

I really like the idea and I love you tank! I agree that the health and size of the tads is likely due to a massive amount of natural easy to find food. I can only imagine how many little creatures you would find in a sample under microscope. When I kept a lot of fish I always loved to examine the water to see how well the micro environment was doing. It could be a matter of there being a lot of small animal life that they have been eating and growing better than an all algae or other diet.

Do you dose fertilizers for the plants? I wonder if this is also helping their health and size because they may be getting minerals and such from the water.

[Jenste]

No fertilizers or C02 - I found that the FBTs seem to mostly poo while sitting in the water so that combined with fish waste and any left over fish food or the random drowned decomposing cricket feed the plants. I run two Fluval 405 filters on the tank so I figure I am loosing tadpoles there also but again, survival of the fittest method.

[Jenste]

Ok, not the best quality as it came out darker than I would have liked but oh well. I had plugged the camera into the charger but never double checked that the charger was plugged in so I was racing the battery light.

Next time I will fiddle with the settings a bit better.

The dark blob at the beginning near the substrate is one of the large tadpoles, you can see how it is bigger than a neon at this point.


Fire Belly Toad Paludarium - YouTube

[Jenste]

[Jenste]

Another episode of "Cat TV" - Piglet, my 5 year old special needs cat LOVES the Fire belly toad tank. She is very tiny, so we put an ottoman stool at the base of the tank so she can stand on it and see into the tank.

She gets a little over excited sometimes....see the end. I had to stop recording right after because I couldn't hold in my laughter.

Cat and Fire Belly Toads - YouTube

[Jenste]

A few of the larger tadpoles decided to give a special appearance today so I had a blast going photo crazy - most of the pictures came out awful but I thought a few came out great.


There are also new eggs developing and my toads decided to lay more this morning. So far, this set up is really making me happy.
The pictures add a great size comparison between 3/3.5 weeks old and new eggs - They are all on the same type of plant, Cambomba, you can really see the growth in such a short time.