Pacific Chorus Frog

[Paul Rust]

Paul,

How solid is this "xenophobia" and is there any indication what causes it?

In Other Words, " Are there any species that they will tolerate? " and " What is it that let's the PCF's know that another species is using a particular water feature, so the PCF's don't lay eggs in it ? "

Starting with the obvious they have eyes, so they of course can see fish or other predators in the water. Anything else would depend on the species, for instance a giant water bug will give off a chemical signature that will cause the frogs to avoid laying eggs in the water. if you don't care about breeding you can keep a completely aquatic species in with them. I have kept Rough Skinned Newts with my PCFs in a large enclosure and they did fine with the aquatic ones but were skittish around the terrestrial ones. The focus of this article is the care of Pacific Chorus Frogs so the best possible environment is presented. The degree of degredation by adding other species is up to the keeper. It is best to keep species seperate.

[Chopper Greg]

Starting with the obvious they have eyes, so they of course can see fish or other predators in the water.

Then they have better eyes the I - I'm lucky if I can see a 6 inch fish, unless it is just under the surface.

Anything else would depend on the species, for instance a giant water bug will give off a chemical signature that will cause the frogs to avoid laying eggs in the water.

That was the part that I was wondering about - I wonder if the PCF's would know a danger if they have not encountered it before - I do know that like some other frogs, if 1 tad gets injured, there appears to to be a chemical that is released in to the water, signaling danger, and suddenly all the other tads are undergoing metamorphose.

if you don't care about breeding you can keep a completely aquatic species in with them. I have kept Rough Skinned Newts with my PCFs in a large enclosure and they did fine with the aquatic ones but were skittish around the terrestrial ones.

Thats just it, I do care about breeding, but I also care about having multi-species tank ( can I say multi-species tank on this forum? ).

I just don't have a lot of room for multiple tanks, so I carefully select species for compatibility, and as I generally prefer native species over exotics, I have been speculating on the use of one of the small native fish that normally feed on insect larva small enough small enough to make PCF tads look big by comparison.

The focus of this article is the care of Pacific Chorus Frogs so the best possible environment is presented. The degree of degredation by adding other species is up to the keeper. It is best to keep species seperate.

I understand - please do not take my data of joining as my experience level, for I have been doing tanks for more than 15 yrs now - a multi-species tank is never anything to lightly under take, requiring time to study the species under consideration to make sure that they are compatible, thus while I have had PCF's before as a single species ( and would like to have them again ),

I am here now to get as much information as I can in evaluating them for 240 gal multi-species set up - another species under consideration for this tank is the Canyon Treefrog ( Hyla arenicolor )similar in size and temperament to the PCF, but also like the PCF, there is not a lot of information, available on them ( in some ways the Canyon Treefrog would actually be better as the tads get larger before metamorphose, but they are much harder to find than PCF's ).

[Paul Rust]

I have never had them lay eggs in a water feature with fish or newts in it. I have literally bred thousands of PCF in a very successful 3 year re-introduction project and in the areas where they have been released I don't find PCFs breeding in the ponds that have newts present. This is just my experience with them, maybe yours will be different.

[Chopper Greg]

I'm not saying that it will work - only that I wonder about the specific mechanism that causes them to avoid inhabited waters, and if that mechanism can be short circuited.


On a separate note........

Last I heard, you were working on a way to ship egg's and larva - have you come up with a way to do so?

[Paul Rust]

I'm not saying that it will work - only that I wonder about the specific mechanism that causes them to avoid inhabited waters, and if that mechanism can be short circuited.


On a separate note........

Last I heard, you were working on a way to ship egg's and larva - have you come up with a way to do so?

I appologize but i don't ship, you must be thinking of someone else.

[Chopper Greg]

My bad.

[Greg M]

It's great to see a care article on Pacific Chorus Frogs! I had these for years (including an old male named Igor who lived for 11+ years), and I found them to be wonderful animals! Back when I was caring for these, pesticides/herbicides were not widely used where I lived, so I mostly fed PCFs wild-caught worms/insects/spiders. Earthworms (cut to appropriate size) were the staple, even for new transformants, and then "field plankton" was used to diversify the diet. I generally don't mix species, but I had some success housing PCFs with one of the the local ambystomoids, the long-toed salamander (A. macrodactylum). The PCFs would breed fairly consistently in the presence of the salamanders, but of course, compatible sizes were important, and the salamanders needed to be well-fed or they would bite the PCFs... Anyway, great article!