OMG! I have a M. Betsileo froglet!

[Geo]

OMG!!!!!!!!, woke up this morning and when I went to put some FF in the habitat for the mantellas a tiny froglet came out of the moss to chase a fly! It is soooooo small. I have finally succeeded in breding my M. Betsileo! Haven't seen any others yet. So exciting.

[deranged chipmunk]

Awesome news George!! Congrats!!!

[Geo]

[Silkmoth]

Its adorable!! Good job Geo. I hope you find many more babies.[/QUOTE]

[DigitalPunk]

Awesome Geo!

[Geo]

ugh what a night. Came home to discover that the wall unit that the habitat sits on oddly enough is splintering apart. Never saw that before in thick wood furniture. Took me three hours to carefully disassemble the habitat. Five adults are safe. One is missing so I assumed that it had died at some point. Have 6 froglets that are healthy, three more then I thought. Then I found six tadpoles with hindlegs which was way cool. If everyone does well then I have twelves mantellas from my first batch. Going to work tomorrow on a new setup. Right now everyone are in small temporary setups. whew.

[Geo]

Thx Bill! Now I am on the visual hunt for whether there are any more in the habitat but it is large and covered with plants and a million places they could be easily hiding out. ugh.

[Mentat]

Congratulations George!

[MantellaGuy]

WELL DONE MATE!!!

Incredibly happy for you, we can compare notes eh?

[deranged chipmunk]

Hello there and welcome to the world little one!!!

[deranged chipmunk]

Oh I know that feeling too well! Lol that is really awesome though George! I hope you find more in there. :-)

[Heatheranne]

Congrats! What an adorable little one!

[Geo]

Thx everyone. I feel like I should have a cigar or something lol (don't smoke so maybe I will have some cold cider instead). Anyhooooo, keeping due diligence in front of the habitat at the moment to see if I can sight any others. A suggestion to anyone doing a large setup for the first time - Arrange it so that you can walk around the entire habitat should you need to for whatever reason. If you got the space use it. My Mantella habitat is in the mancave on a custom built table up against the wall. Impossible to move now so the entire back of the habitat is out of visual range.

[Mentat]

...A suggestion to anyone doing a large setup for the first time - Arrange it so that you can walk around the entire habitat should you need to for whatever reason...

Agree 100%; large heavy set-ups should be reachable from all sides. I know of a couple huge aquariums whose owners had to either empty them or demolish a back wall when things went wrong .

[flybyferns]

This is so terrific !
How exciting !

Congratulations....... Geo.

[deranged chipmunk]

Thx everyone. I feel like I should have a cigar or something lol (don't smoke so maybe I will have some cold cider instead). Anyhooooo, keeping due diligence in front of the habitat at the moment to see if I can sight any others. A suggestion to anyone doing a large setup for the first time - Arrange it so that you can walk around the entire habitat should you need to for whatever reason. If you got the space use it. My Mantella habitat is in the mancave on a custom built table up against the wall. Impossible to move now so the entire back of the habitat is out of visual range.

That is why I always sound like a broken record, plan, plan, plan, test, test, test. If you can't do something when the tank is empty, you sure as heck can't do it while it is complete.

My next build has been in the planning stages for over a year, and I'm still not sure I have everything worked out lol

[Geo]

Well, I spent the entire evening trying to relocate as much as I could so I would be able to expose the back of the habitat. Eventually I was able to mount a light back there and sure enough it flushed out some tadpoles! I saw a lot of activity but I can't say how many exactly but I can confirm at the very least that there were 5 very healthy and active tadpoles.

I designed the habitat in such a way originally in that it is basically an island with a significant landmass above and is surrounded by water below or what I have come to call the lagoon. The landmass started off as a large / wide bowl shape structure that I made from thin elongated slabs of slate. I placed them such that they created a bowl/crater in which was placed peat moss, soil, bark, moss, plants, rocks, sticks, plants and so on. The land mass touches all the sides of the tank except for one small corner in the front in which I have access to a small sponge filter. Besides controlling minuscule debris it also contributes to the essential microbiology of the tank water.

The lagoon is a bit different then what a lot of folks do in their habitats. It has its own life-system going on. In the lagoon is a borneo which is a small type of catfish that was intended to be a janitor of sorts and he has been doing his job very well. He scavenges for his meals but is non-threatening to the tadpoles. Actually I saw two tadpoles eating right next to him and he didn't care at all. There is also a healthy population of dwarf shrimp living in the lagoon as well as "water fleas", brine shrimp and so forth.

When the tadpoles moved to the front of the tank the first thing I noticed was that they were burrowing through the lagoon's bottom where there is an inche layer of crushed oak leaves, twigs, gravel and so on - basically what you find on the bottom of a pond. I should mention that the lagoon is 5 inches deep. These tadpoles are swimming around like crazy and very active in the bottom debris. This seems to go against a lot of what I read about not having deep water, keeping it pure and so on. My philosophy, as some of you know already, is to emulate nature and that is what I did here. The images I have included show the tadpoles nibbling on micro-organisms found on a twig in the water. Previously they were snacking on an old baby meal worm that had fallen into the lagoon that the dwarf shrimp had started to devour. It seems that they are also snacking on a mixture I make of fish flakes, algae sticks, dried bloodworms and a few other stuff.

I apologize for the quality of the images - bad lighting, me sooooo tired, tadpoles moving around quickly, water has natural tannin coloration. Hope to get something better for you all.

[Mentat]

Does your "Borneo Catfish" looks like this Pseudogastromyzon myersi? If so, it is known as Myers Hillstream Loach. Thanks for the pics; even my old eyes can see the tads. Looks like you will have lots more froglets soon .

[deranged chipmunk]

Very cool George. I'm very happy to see someone else realizing that having water in the tank is not only not a detriment, but a positive thing.

I love your approach to frogging, mimic the environment. It's what we all strive for and you nailed it :-)

[DigitalPunk]

Awesome! Is there a build log for the tank you are talking about. Would love to seed some pictures of it!