Grey Tree Frog tadpoles (I hope!) and some questions

[dfreas]

I was just wondering if either of you would have a rough estimate of age at those sort of sizes?

Hard to say much based on sizes really - they seem to develop at widely different rates. While I've never mail ordered a frog I have mail ordered chickens before and industry standard practice for shipping baby chicks is to ship them the day they hatch because for the first 48 hours they don't eat while they absorb the remainder of the yolk. I wouldn't be surprised if the frog industry does something similar. Since the frogs don't need to eat while the tail is absorbed that may be the best time to ship them so they don't starve if the mail is delayed. If that's the case there is a good chance your frogs have just finished absorbing their tails. The first meal you gave them may well have been the first meal they ate as frogs.

On the other hand these guys really don't seem to gain a lot in length at the beginning. So while mine were probably about 2cm when they finished absorbing their tails it's now 3 weeks later and most of them are still under 3cm. They are much thicker than they were at first and their muscles and body shape have developed quite a lot, but length gain has been fairly minimal.

Hope this helps - and congratulations on your new frogs!

[KayJoh]

Thanks for taking the time to go over that, I guess the age is just something I will never know, just glad I finally found some.

[KP]

I'm another who just came to this forum after joining it a year or more ago and not getting replies much haven't been on since. Also been too busy in general, but I'm glad to have stumbled upon this thread.

Since 2009 I've been helping the local Gray community thrive with my pool as their yearly spawning ground.
I'd have gladly tried to answer your many good questions if I'd found your posts earlier.

Anyway nice to find others who actually care for these cute, sticky little gremlins.

Starting in 2015 I began to get a lot more technical in my efforts to make the property increasingly welcoming for the 2 Toad specs and the Gray and Wood Frogs who use the pool cover spring pond for spawning. Before I take the cover off I get all the tadpoles off and enough leaves that fall onto it the previous fall as I can and set them up in what I call "nursery pods" with the same water they hatched in on the pool cover. In 2016 I started counting every single froglet that crawled out of the water of the pods and distributing them around the 1.75 acre plot. I counted 3,500 Micro-toads (toadlets) of the American and Fowlers Toads and stopped counting after that. That count didn't include all the ones that crawled off the cover before and after I started gathering them up to prvent the huge die off from the blisteringly hot pool cover plastic. After that period the cover came off and that year I accounted for 109 Gray Tree Froglets.

I had no intention at all of harboring any of them when I started and I stuck to that until I found one with a badly deformed leg that couldn't jump well at all and would have been a snack right out of the chute. So I kept that one and that's the first one I raised. He only stayed for 2 years and one night in his second spring he was playing in the pool cover pond with his relatives and he was taken by an owl!

There's more to that story and I went one year without domesticating any but their numbers have increased dramatically each year since I started keeping track of them.
Seven adults and a few "Junior Mints" as I call the pint-sized ones that stick around past morphing maintain residence on the house with another dozen or so adults in the trees and shrubs around the pool. During the spring spawns they're joined by at least another dozen who come from farther trees and shrubs probably within 100 yards or so.

Last year I found 4 with malformations, one of which was also very anemically colored and unusually small. I domesticated all 4.

To house them I started with all 4 in a 5.5 gal. tank and fed them fruitflies. Then they moved into a 10 gal., then into a 55 gal., then I put the 2 bucks in a 75 gal. and the 2 does stayed in the 55. They eventually all ended up in the 75 gal. tank where they are now and seem pretty happy. One of the does is completely dominant to one buck and her and the other buck are in a power struggle as I type this. The smallest one's the other doe and she's so deformed she can't climb like the others so she stays in her own level of the tank and the others each seem to visit her, and snuggle with her but never act in any competitive manner toward her, they seem like they're concerned for her and she seems to appreciate their company in demonstrable ways. She lightens her color when she gets a visit from them.

OK, I've rambled on enough. Good to read your accounts and hope to read more from you and other Gray Tree Frog people here.
I have a few videos of the frog and toad community on my property in this playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...8f46gZXD7Bq3FD

[KP]

So how are your little Grays doing? We've been taking over your thread lately. Do you have an update?

[dfreas]

Sure I can give an update. Lately I've been working on getting them out of the five gallon tank and into their permanent paludarium setup. I'm keeping it mostly water since the grays rarely use the ground level anyway. That way I don't have to clean it out - their waste falls into the water and I have tons of invertebrates that I always keep in all my aquariums that act as an amazing cleanup crew. The tank I'm converting is a 56 gallon tall aquarium - I've never been happy with it as an aquarium because the extra height makes it really hard to get enough light down to the bottom level for solid plant growth, but that extra height makes it perfect for a tree frog setup. Plus with the land portion I'll be able to get plants closer to the light and I should be able to get solid plant growth throughout within a few months.

The water portion is home to five species of snail, some dwarf crayfish, freshwater shrimp, and a small school of golden tetras as well as six species of aquatic plants. I'm planning on also adding a couple of african butterfly fish. They'll be a perfect addition because they skim the surface so they are easily visible when looking down from above. They are generally considered difficult fish because they tend to only eat live insects and refuse anything else, but that makes them perfect for this tank because they will clean up all the flies and other bugs that fall off of the branches and end up in the water.

Above the water I have a large sycamore branch with coprinus micaceus mushrooms growing on it (collecting mushrooms is another hobby of mine). This particular variety of mushroom is interesting because they glisten and sparkle in the light. They bloom every evening but only last about a day before they dissolve. Under the branch I have a cement planter shaped like a log - even though it was cement I still had to weight it down with four pounds of vinyl coated lead diving weights to get it to sit solidly on the ground. And don't worry about the cement leaching into the water - I coated it with epoxy for stability and then an additional coat of non toxic acrylic sealer over that. In the planter are two bromelades and a pothos which climbs up the sycamore branch. Some giant orange isopods live at the base of the plants as well, but I never see them, because they are buried in the leaf litter I put in there for them.

Light is full spectrum 4000 lumen on a color controlled timer so it goes through a full cycle of orange sunrise to full white noon sun down again to a nice blue tinted evening before going dark for the night. Rock waterfall in the back is a filter and I also have the heater for the water inside it. Keeping the water heated to 78F ends up giving the entire aquarium a nice warm feel with decent humidity so everyone is comfortable.

Believe it or not the frogs are in there. Really only ever see them in the evening when it's feeding time, during the day they wedge themselves in at the top of the branch or behind the waterfall power cords and basically disappear. Hopefully when they get bigger they won't be able to squeeze into such tight spaces and I will see more of them.

[KP]

Beautiful. I have my Grays in a 75 gal tank turned on it's end. I've considered modifying it to do this kind of habitat with it. How many Grays did you end up with, and where can the lighting setup you have be purchased?