Atelopus eggs!!!!

[Kurt]

Nice. I have been to Shawn's house and the frog room is very impressive. Better than a lot of zoo collections I have seen/worked with.

[clownonfire]

Nice. I have been to Shawn's house and the frog room is very impressive. Better than a lot of zoo collections I have seen/worked with.

I've read today Shawn mentioning his frog room as the "frog pit"... I can just imagine.

[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.