So I fell in love with a frog...

[Lady]

Do you believe that there can be love at first sight with a frog?

I have been going to the pet store that sells dart frogs a few times a week since we first saw the frogs a almost 4 weeks back. mostly asking questions and buying this or that to make our little Vivarium. They have little Northern Ranitomeya Variabilis and and different Leucomelas Morphs. They had a few Aratus morphs that sold and a red and white kind that is very shy. They had some cobalts and today I saw the little Pamilio all by himself.

Well there was this single male Azures that is close to fully mature and I swear when I saw him today he whispered in my ear, "Take me home, for I am your Mila." So now he sits in my QT setup waiting for the springtails to take in the Vivarium and us to be sure he is healthy. He is a bouncy, frisky, friendly fellow who perches everywhere he can get a foothold and laps up the flies from the store bought culture as if they were going out of style. He loves to jump up on the leaves of the pothos and occasionally he falls off and makes me laugh.

When I can catch him in a good shot I will post a picture.

~Lady

[DigitalPunk]

Congrats on your new frog Lady! Azureus are great fun to observe (we have 4 of them).

Have you decided on a supplement dusting schedule you will use with his flies?

I hope you and your frog have a long happy time with each other!

[Lady]

Congrats on your new frog Lady! Azureus are great fun to observe (we have 4 of them).

Have you decided on a supplement dusting schedule you will use with his flies?

I hope you and your frog have a long happy time with each other!

Thursday and Sunday. We bought the same two vitamin powders they have been giving him at the Pet store, which they just mix together.

I'm glad you are happy for me. Thank you for all of your advice and believe me I will ask your advice in the future.

[DigitalPunk]

Pet Stores are notorious for doing things wrong and giving poor poor advice so please pardon my skepticism.

What supplement were the giving him at the store?

Calcium +D3 should be offered 4 - 5 times a week and a multivitamin should be offered 1 to 2 times a week. In reality you want to be supplementing with every feeding. It is also important to keep tabs on the expiration date. Supplements will expire 6 months after you open them. Around the 4 to 5 month mark you want to replace them with fresh ones and toss the old ones in the trash. You will throw away a lot of unused supplements, but that is the nature of the beast.

Here is a current thread that is going on about this very topic http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...pplements.html

[Lady]

I knew you would correct anything wrong with the advice from the pet store. The one powder is a Rep-Cal pink Phosphorus-Free Calcium with Vitamin D3 the other is Repashy's Vitamin A Plus which says to give only once a week on the bottle. What would you recomend?

[Lady]

Ok, so I looked at the post you linked and flybyferns posted pictures of the vitamins I have in a post there. She also showed a blue labeled multivitamin next to the pink one I mentioned. They do sell this at the pet store, so I can get it really easy. I still plan to use the vitamin a plus but only once a week and very sparingly. Lucky for me I bought the smallest bottle they had. I think I have the days figured out for each one in my head. I will have to write it out, because it will be a daily "What do I add this time?" situation.

[DigitalPunk]

Both the blue and pink labeled bottles (RepCal) are common brands and work very well. The one caution I have is for the vitamin A. It can be very dangerous and is very easy to overdose your pet with it. Most people who use the straight vitamin A that I know offer it only 1 to 2 times a month and only to their breeding adult pairs. Just offering the information up as a precaution. The Blue Multivitamin is what I used for the first 4 or 5 months I had my frogs. It seems to work very well

[Lady]

Both the blue and pink labeled bottles (RepCal) are common brands and work very well. The one caution I have is for the vitamin A. It can be very dangerous and is very easy to overdose your pet with it. Most people who use the straight vitamin A that I know offer it only 1 to 2 times a month and only to their breeding adult pairs. Just offering the information up as a precaution. The Blue Multivitamin is what I used for the first 4 or 5 months I had my frogs. It seems to work very well

Ok, I will only use the vitamin A once a month. I don't want to kill my frog with an OD. I will buy the blue vitamins because they make sense.

[Frogman1031]

Congrats on your new frog !! We are missing something! It begins with a "p" and ends with a "ictures of the frog"

[ColleenT]

good luck- but be warned. i have 3 females now, b/c i believed i had a male 2x now. it can be very tricky to sex them and even with huge thumb pads, Daphne is a female. so is Debbie. I knew Darla was a female to start with.

[Lady]

This is the best picture I could get. Here Mila is sitting on the largest Pothos leaf. If he turns out to be a she Mila is still a good name. I think I will really only know gender for sure if I hear chirping or see eggs.

[psychocircus]

Gorgeous frog. Congrats.

[DigitalPunk]

I would say based on this one Pic and no real size comparison that Mila may actually be a female, but that is a guess without anything to reference Mila's size against. I am going based off of shape and Mila looks female to me in this pic.

Very pretty frog. Love the dot pattern on your Azureus

[jarteta97]

Didn't Terry suggest one drop of Vitamin A on the frog's back once a week??

[DigitalPunk]

Not sure, but Vitamin A is very very easy to overdose an amphibian on. It is not required to have happy healthy frogs, but is said to be great if you have a breeding pair. I am very very cautious with it and I only ever recommend you use it if you are confident and if you limit it to 2 times a month max.

I am of course referring to the Vitamin A powder and not a liquid drop. I never ever give my frogs supplements via a dropper on the back....


I don't know that doing the dropper on the back is outright wrong, It just feels like something that could be a more advanced thing to do and I am not comfortable with it.

[jarteta97]

Hmmm, interesting. I really don't know, so that's why I'm asking. Maybe Terry can chime in on why he does it his way. I do want to err on the side of caution in anything I do to my frog.

[Lady]

I am so totally glad that Paul brought up vitamins because I want my Mila to be a healthy frog.

Speaking of healthy I would like to talk about tests that a new frog needs to be sure you have a healthy one. I know about the fecal sample that should be sent of to a lab, but I have also heard of outbreaks of a certain fungus and there is Ranavirus. I know I can buy a kit from Josh's Frogs that can be used to take 2 skin swabs to send to lab to run the tests for Chytrid fungus and for Ranavirus. Is this worth my money to get? I'm sure that if I did the tests and got the result that my Mila had either one, a Herp vet that has a practice just down the street could perscribe treatment. I know that a healthy frog is very important. Heaven knows I love my Azures frog even though I have only had Mila since the afternoon of the 24th and don't want to find out too late that I could have saved such a precious life with just a few bucks for a kit and the cost of a test so I could get the right meds and make it all better.

Please chime in with your advice on the subject.

[ColleenT]

based on my 3 female frogs, your frog looks female to me, but it's very difficult to sex them. the shape of the back looks female to me.

[Lady]

In the end I bought Mila because of personality and because I really felt the this was the frog I was meant to have. I chose the name Mila because it is actually used for men in some cultures and woman in others. I know that I might not know for certain if I had a male, even though I was hoping. So no matter what I will love my Mila.

[ColleenT]

trust me, i know. i tried to get a male 2 x and now i have an all female group. At least mine are all getting along. i do enjoy watching them hunt for their food.