Hello All I just wanted to write up a guide to breeding mantellas and looking after the tads and the transfer over into froglets from my experience. I currently have 40 froglets from both mantella Baroni and Pulchra that will be going to other zoos.

To breed your frogs they must be atleast 1 year of age.

To condition your frogs to breed they must undergo a winter cycle (3 months) during this time the humidity should be reduced and food should be reduced. The temperature can range from 20 during the day to 18 during the night. They will reduce calling during this time.

To initiate breeding the temperature must be increased to close to 24 degrees, the food can be increased, and the humidity can be increased too. Their enclosures can also be renovated. Within the next few months the frogs will start calling and there may be some wrestling.

Eggs are laid under wood or in the moss near the water area. The eggs are sensitive to the light so dont expose them to it too long. I experimented with removing one clutch and incubating it on a petri dish on a bed of moss and leaving one clutch in the tank. In five days the eggs hatched and was a mass of swimming tadpoles. The eggs in the enclosure yielded more tadpoles than the one that was removed.

I set up some platic containers to house the tadpoles. I had an air pump with air stone in each tank. One tank had gravel the other did not. The one without gravel was much easier to clean and the tadpoles survived much better in the bare tank. Both tanks had a sprig of pothos. I completed a 50% water change daily and replaced it with room temperature decholorinated water with one cup of water which had tannins from mopani wood. The tadpoles were fed a mixture of 1/3 cuttlebone, 1/3 nutrafin max fish flake, and 1/3 nutrafin algae tab. They also received half a tab of hikari algae tab. The left over food was removed via syringe.

two weeks later the tadpoles grew front legs so they were transfered to transition tank of water, gravel which was covered in moss and a piece of wood. When the tadpoles were found on the moss covered land area they were transfered to the froglet tanks which are covered in brown paper towel and had 3 water dishes and pieces of cork bark which was left in my springtail enclosures. For the first month they were fed only springtails untill they were big enough for glider fruit flies. The biggest die offs occured during the froglet stage while reabsorbing the tails. Also pulchra take along time to colour up. I was worried I may have had hybrids as I had not removed my golden mantella. In the future he will be removed prior to the breeding season.

In total I had 40 pulchra tadpoles and 17 baroni tadpoles. Today I have 30 pulchra mini frogs, and 10 baroni minifrogs. They are about 1/3 the size of the adults and 15 will be off to other zoos in a months time. The rest will join there parents in a few months time. Just as a side note the pulchra tadpoles were laid by one frog (I only have 4) and I found them at the tadpole stage. The baronis were my experimenting frogs were I discovered it was easier to raise the eggs in the habitat and to remove them when they are tadpoles. Originally there were probably more baroni tadpoles but poor water quality is a suspected cause of death. The first time I was able to count they there were seventeen after I had removed most of the gravel.

My next project is to breed our tomato frogs and am still waiting for our dart frogs to come to breeding age and for our ranitomeya vents to have another tadpole.

If you have any questions please pm me and I will be more than happy to help you out. Also if anyone knows of anyone breeding golden mantellas other than Mark please pm me as I am looking for some mates for my current guy.

Regards,

Wayne Woods
Edmonton Valley Zoo
Primary Amphibian Keeper

excellent read. are you using any literature as a source? I believe Chris Mattison released an excellent book on breeding amphibians. I found some excellent books from the publisher Chimaira on the subject as well. I currently have a M. crocea calling like crazy, i was able to induce his breeding from a low humidity to high humidity. i found temperature wasn't as important.

Along those lines- here is some more information on breeding Mantellas

http://mantella-conservation.org/

does anyone know if Frogkeeper is still around?? I send him or her a pm...