Scaphiophryne Gottlebei

[kerokero]

I honestly don't have the heart to throw away a lot of perfectly good eggs That's just me though, I figure if I'm going to put in the work to get them to spawn I want to make sure I can handle what they give me. Having very many other tanks of breeding things would put a crimp on my ability to do that, but I've been slowly moving in that direction anyways (with projects looking at amphidromous fish species). Closest I ever got to that was feeding the eggs of later clutches to the first Milk frog clutch... but that's also actually what they do in the wild to survive in those little tree holes!

There's a lot known about filter feeding tadpoles - as far as I'm aware, many (most/all?) Microhylid tadpoles filter feed. And surely some of the folks who breed Xenopus can solve this problem (I think that's already been mentioned in the thread)? It would be fantastic to get this species established in the North American hobby. Based on the export quota, is it realistic to even get enough founder specimens to have a genetically viable population, even if there is much breeding success?

These definitely have a filter feeding stage (at night), but I think it's the being buried and munching their way through sand during the day that may be causing some issue (if it's not water quality). If you don't give them sand, I can see how there may be issues. I've raised local Microhylid tads (eastern narrow mouths) successfully with sera micron and they did great! But they don't have that "buried in the sand by day" thing...

I'm a bit surprised that zoo would have kept them in "standard" set ups after the description of the tadpole was published - the need for the sand seems pretty important given the description
Unless of course they made a similar assumption as mentioned already and just assumed a Microhylid is a Microhylid and gave them greenwater/sera micron. Sand substrates have also been shown to be eaten and "digested" by a number of other captive species, and they only skim the top, not bury themselves in it LOL. Guess we'll just have to see when more are bred. Diatom population explosions in the sand and greenwater would be pretty classic after a heavy rain into the whole the tadpoles are laid in, both are readily cultured in captivity, and there are multiple synthetic foods that could be fed in the filter stage as well (sera micron, algae pastes, golden pearls, xenopus granuals, etc).

Lastly, I think it was Corey who mentioned getting CITES papers from sellers as a condition of purchasing frogs. I wholeheartedly agree but it's hard to find anyone who has the papers, and when you do (all I could think about was Mark Pepper/Understory Enterprises), they won't part with them.

I think this is a lot harder with PDFs since there are only a few people who import/export them and they want to keep the ability to do that, or don't want the papers used in other ways. With other CITES animals, it's almost a given that you'd have the papers so you can prove where they came from! The biggest issue I've had is that they didn't want to give up the name of the importer they were getting animals from which is on the documentation. I believe this information may be able to be blocked out while still allowing the documentation to be viable? It's a challenge, but also a matter of building up a relationship with a seller so that they know you aren't interested in stealing their business. My biggest help was knowing a couple people who know importers who could run an grab me frogs - ideal for picking out the frogs you need from an import (like both sexes!) and also not invested as resellers so they don't care about the other stuff as much.

If this really gets off the ground as an official project it may take having someone with that type of relationship to get the needed animals with paperwork if you need it. My interest in Eric having the CITES is if he eventually bred them we could bring some to the states for bloodlines, and if I had some with papers the same thing applies - it increases the breeding pools on both sides if management is the goal.

As for the small amounts coming in, as long as they KEEP coming in then that's fine (we're running into the same issue with Atelopus). You don't normally get all your founder stock in one import and have them all survive to breed, it would normally take a number of years to build it up. You get some, figure out some of the key points of keeping them happy, you may loose a lot. Next year you get some, you know more so you loose less (hopefully) and your founder stock has expanded and you may be breeding this year too. Year after, yet more animals, and now you're proving out some of the breeding quirks with the original group, and getting year 2s into the breeding pool. You may even have animals already floating around the hobby for a while that may get pulled in that aren't even fresh imports!

My one glimmer of hope is the recent flurry of success with M. stelzneri. However the cynic in me knows that most of that success was due the frogs already being cycled in the last 12 months before landing in hobbyist hands. I sincerely doubt the breeding success this past year will be repeated for long.

There was at least one breeding that was not of fresh imports, and it was a person testing out some of the cycling quirks - lots of good stuff learned. This is a key concept though that is important to remember - getting good spawns out of fresh imports can help a bit (instantly expanded founder stock if you can keep them going), but it's consistently being able to spawn them year after year with the majority of the girls laying, and good fertility that tells you that you know what you're doing. This is why with the recent import of atelopus I've been a little hesitant about spreading around information that was beyond what is in the Golden Frog manual - people beg for this information but it hasn't been tested enough to really know if these things work! People aren't willing to wait three years for a well tested method


Brent - Thank you for the really helpful substrate information! That's the key information that has been missing from the care of Ornate Hopper information, and probably what can really make the difference on success or not with these guys long term.

I can understand their dislike of the CareFresh - my hognoses did too. I think it was because it was so lightweight that digging in it didn't feel right to them.

[clownonfire]

I started a new thread on the build of the Scaphiophryne gottlebei's tank I'm starting. The motives are explained in that thread. I'm counting on your inputs.

Thanks all,

Eric