Dying Pacific Chorus Frogs

[umailtom]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can enlighten me as obviously I'm doing something wrong. I scooped up about 50 tadpoles from drying puddle about six weeks ago and have been trying to get at least some to grow to adults. I'm usually pretty good with animals (and plants) and am a biologist but for the life of me I can't get these little guys to survive more than 10 days or so once the morph into frogs.

Here are the conditions:

1. Once they morph I move them to a larger terrarium with a small water dish, lots of plants and coconut fiber - so they don't accidentally eat dirt. Some were dying in the original tank too before I set up the larger second tank.
2. The water is spring water but initially I was using tap water treated with conditioner - that I use for my fish.
3. They do eat and I've been feeding them D. hydei and D. melanogaster. There are plenty, the tank is crawling with flies so hunting isn't an issue.
4. I don't see any red leg or obvious signs of disease when I find them dead.
5. All of the dead frogs I've found are submerged in water. It's shallow with fern fronds (local plant from where they lived) they can easily climb out of the water onto if they choose as I ensure the leaves or something dips down into the water for them to climb out on.
6. Temps range from 60-90 degrees and humidity is about 50%. It's rarely reached 90 and I haven't noticed any temp dependent correlation with their deaths.
7. They have plenty of places to hide and cover from the lamp that only shines on one side of the tank.
8. They are not over-crowded. They die too fast for that to happen.
9. I've seen about half grow larger before they get listless and seem to give up, go for a swim and die.
10. No dead tadpoles.

Any ideas? I'm running out of tadpoles fast! For those concerned - I never had plans to return them to the wild and understand they may spread disease if I do.

[Frog Mom]

I'm not an expert, but I do have 7 PCF's that I've been raising from newly hatched tadpoles and I haven't lost any yet. The only things I did different were I had a rock in the water that they really seemed to like to climb onto when they were morphing, and I never put a light on their tank. I just had it at room temperature.

Anyway, those are a couple of ideas. I hope you are able to figure it out.

[umailtom]

I'm considering that getting them at a store might have been a better way to go. These may have carried some disease. The puddle was pretty funky. Thanks for the reply... Oh, did you buy yours? If so and I can get them online would you mind posting a link to the place?

[LilyPad]

I would try removing the pond and see if that helps. I have a little rock bowl thing that is just barely wet with water for my 4 week old spring peepers. I spray the tank down 1-2 times a day and they actually get most of their water off the leaves. I'm super super paranoid about drowning babies though!

[umailtom]

I'm going to try Amy's idea - sounds genius! I'd never have thought of that on my own. Thank you! Still curious if others have suggestions. It's suspicious I've had maybe 30 or so die so far though.

[Frog Mom]

Good luck! You'll have to keep us updated on how things are going.

[Frog Mom]

I just scooped mine out of a drainage ditch. I've never seen them for sale. I'm in Oregon and I'm not sure it's even legal to sell them here. In fact, it wasn't legal for me to take them out of the drainage ditch in the first place, but I didn't know that at the time. And now it's not legal for me to release them, but I like them, so it all worked out.