Atelopus eggs!!!!

[Kurt]

Yeah its deep in the ground, under his massive garage.

[clownonfire]

Tads anyone (from Shawn's eggs)...??!!!!!

[rcteem]

Tads anyone (from Shawn's eggs)...??!!!!!

Any updates? I keep forgetting to ask him every time I have him on the phone...

Can you post pictures of your tanks?

[kerokero]

Last I heard there was some good development, then the majority of them were dying. We weren't sure if it was water related, the fact that they were exposed to light for a limited time early on, or what. The good news is that he definitely had a girl, and she would not be getting egg bound this season!

These guys have light sensitive eggs, so the fact that these eggs were laid out in the open was a bit scary - they were later covered with an object (I think it was a clay pot?) and they showed development after that, so we're not sure if that played a part. Clay pots were provided so that there would be dark cave areas (as this has worked with other Atelopus a bit), but it was realized belatedly that they were not placed in the tank in the right fashion.

They went for the area of highest water flow in the tank, which may mean that more water flow was needed - 250-350 gph water flow has been recommended for zeteki, and the filter running the waterfall in Shawn's tank was not rated anywhere near that. While setting up a version based off successful Atelopus set ups, Eric and I learned a lot about filter and pump water flows

So while this breeding season hasn't been to successful, we've learned a good bit to apply towards next season. It was interesting to see Shawn's interpretation of how to set up the tank (the man is great with PDFs!) but there are some definite drawbacks to working with these guys - they are nothing like PDFs and sometimes that gets in the way.

[rcteem]

I know they need a lot of oxygen in the water right? I would recommend a canister filter or tickle down filtration as that is what we use at the Smithsonian...hope next season will be better for all of you!!!


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[kerokero]

Oxygen is super important, but in this case I really worried about the water flow.... if you don't have the water flow the oxygen doesn't even begin to be an issue. Shawn's tank was run on a Zoo Med turtle filter (with a waterfall to attempt to add oxygen) which *WITHOUT* the filter media in it, the filter maxes out at 79gph. With filter media in it, you only get about 80% of the estimated gph. Zeteki tads are recommended to have 250-350 gph of movement in the tank.

Good water movement in the other breeder tanks have been achieved by using both a nice big canister filter (LOVE those things!) as well as submersible water pumps (to make sure the whole tank has water flow around the rocks). Wouldn't hurt to use multiple canister filters. I do have a bit of a love affair with trickle down filters as well!

I'd love to have a large set up with canister filters, at least one trickle down, and maybe even a sump. Then again, I'm a fish nerd, and it's not always that easy to ask a frog person (much less one that raises tads individually in 16oz containers) to set up a tank like this, run it for months so it's biologically active enough to support the tads, all for what may end up being a clutch of eggs that result in what Sean saw

A lot of hillstream loach keepers will also put airstones in front of the water outputs to increase dissolved oxygen in the tank too, but I don't know how effectively this works?