Interfecus

The tadpoles can eat meat but trashy stuff such as hamburger meat can kill them. Scraps of good meat or bits of liver can be used, but using meat means that you need to clean it more often. I would suggest cleaning them every two days. My five whistling tree frog tadpoles managed to turn the water to slime if left three or more days without cleaning in their golfish bowl. Twenty to thirty may (depending on the volume of water) need daily cleaning to achieve a high survival rate. Where were these tadpoles found? Unless they came from Northland or the south island then they're probably golden bell frogs as these are the most common. If they came from Northland or te south island then they could be whistling tree frogs. You can tell which type they are from the colour of the thighs on the adult frogs. Golden bell frogs have a blue tinge to the thighs while whistling tree frogs have orange ones.

The prices on the fnzas website need to be updated, they say that the yearly subscription is only $13.60

Also, below freezing there is a significant difference towards absolute zero. I've read an article before where it was found that certain frogs could survive to -18C if frozen very slowly but died at any temperature below that.

We're not talking about normal sub-zero temperatures. The few creatures that do survive below freezing only generally survive down to about -20C. These brine shrimp cysts may be able to tolerate lower temperatures than that, but I doubt that any cyst frozen to anywhere below -100C, at any freezing speed, could possibly survive.

The 100C upper limit sounds possible but I'll never believe that anything can survive the process of being frozen to absolute zero until I see it happen with my own eyes.

You could try feeding microworms as well, they're really easy to keep. They can also be mailed with a bit of water double-bagged in ziplock bags in a normal envelope. I got mine that way, and they took off really well. PM me if you want me to mail some. About the interbreeding, I've heard that both species carry pairs of lethal genes and others that suppress them. All first generation hybrids will have complete pairs, but a percentage of the second generation will carry a lethal gene without the suppressor. This can cause death. This limiting factor means that they count as seprate species. I may be wrong, as I can't even remember the details or where I read it any more.

Fruit flies can be cultured on a medium of porridge with added yeast. I've written a small article on culturing them on my website at http://codexranarum.webspace4free.biz/food/ffcult.html.

I've kept fruitflies for my fish for quite a while, but I agree that they are very annoying in the terrarium. A few always escape but since they instinctively try to move upwards, any that climb into the salvia (the bushy plant on the left side) will stay there, wandering around in a maze of leaves, for hours on end. I try to tap them into that plant as it is also the frogs' favourite place to sit. The hopping can be annoying and most of them drown in the water dish but I've got plenty and the frogs catch enough of them to happily live on. Have you found any easier foods to keep? The only other foods that I've tried are whiteworms (ignored) and baby nursery web spiders. Most of the baby spiders escaped and have made tiny webs all around my dad's house. Nobody really minds, and my two little half-sisters (aged 6 and 4) love them because they're reading Charlotte's Web now, but I'd prefer something more easily contained.

You're probably right. It was probably just a sign of high stress. The frogs are being kept at my dad's house, and I've been popping over every two days to clean the water. Somebody here added cucumber while I was away but forgot to remove the seeds from the centre of the slices first. The entire centre disintegrated in the water and made it really foul. He emerged from this slime and clung to the side of the bowl, probably very stressed because of it.

They can change colour, but this one was described to me over the phone as being a pale greenish colour, and the frogs only normally change between darker and lighter browns. I've uploaded some pictures of the frogs now to my frog journal at http://www.livejournal.com/~interfecus.

The second emerged while I was absent yesterday. Apparently it appeared very pale, probably due to oxygen starvation because it emerged before the lungs were complete. It has a normal colour now and is much larger than the first one. I'll have to wait to see whether the new one is abnormally large or whether the first is just very small.

I can't work out from watching him whether he likes or dislikes being misted each day. He reacts by pointing his head towards the source and opening his mouth, but also makes an agitated-looking movement with one of his front legs. I've observed this several times over the last few days. How do yours react to being sprayed?

How long does it take them to learn to hunt well? Mine just missed a fruit fly twice when the fly was sitting right in front of it. It has been watching the flies but has barely attempted to chase them, just waiting for them to come really close.

Its quite surprising how quickly they transform. A couple of days ago the front legs came out, this morning it climbed out, and in the space of the rest of the day it has lost most of the tail. Whereas the tail was about the length of the body when it emerged this morning, the tail is now just the length of a front leg. The froglet has already started climbing the plants, even trying to climb a nearly vertical miniature flax, although it failed on that attempt. I've tried putting some whiteworms in the lid of a film canister as food, and I've seen a small caterpillar and a tiny moth among the plants. I've also got the wingless fruitflies for later.

Actually, I've decided that they'll be too hard to tell apart to give names to at this stage. When they're larger I might find some distinctive markings but I can't name them at this stage.

Ira, how many frogs do you have? What proportion of tadpoles (in this group) survived to change? What sort of tank are you keeping them in? I'm quite interested in how others have arranged it. People say that the tadpoles prefer clouded water is better for the frogs but I kept the bowl well cleaned and so far have had 100% survival. Has anybody else had any experience with this? I would like to know whether this theory is always true, only true for some species, or a complete myth. I've posed quite a few questions here, so please make it clear which one you're answering. Thanks .

Also, if anybody has and ideas for a name for this frog, please post it. Names can be of either gender, or it would be even better if a name could be suggested that works for either a male or a female.

Thanks for the idea . Would it eat whiteworms, because I have some of those at home and could make a trip to get them as well as the flies. I didn't bring these originally because I didn't expect it to absorb its tail so quickly.

I have a few wingless fruitflies at my normal house but these frogs are at my dad's house. I'll try to find some aphids. The frog is in a large, well planted terrarium (80L) so I need something that is easily found and doesn't move much.

The first of my 5 tadpoles just emerged from the water this morning. So far I've had no deaths and all of the rest of the tadpoles are about to transform within a week or so. Does anybody know of any foods that a one centimetre long frog can catch and eat? I think that fruitflies might be too quick because it is still rather lethargic and has part of a tail left.

A friend of mine got some of these from animates. After a while he had to give them away because they would eat nothing but snails and he couldn't get enough of them. They're picky little things.

I'd never use fake plants. There are many varieties that can live and reproduce without any effort. These will also help by absorbing ammonia etc from the water. Why use a fake imitation of something when the real thing is easy to use?

You could use traps or a culture to get them, then feed them to the frogs. It'd be a bit of extra hassle, but the frogs would probably leave if they weren't netted in.

You'd need both submerged plants for the tadpoles to eat and floating plants capable of supporting a frog's weight for when the tadpoles mature into frogs. The barrel would need to be pretty big for frogs to live in it - roughly how far across is the barrel? Golden Bell frogs or Green Frogs would be hard to contain because they're strong jumpers. If you surrounded the ferns & barrel with some soft netting or something then you might be able to keep whistling tree frogs in it.

I've heard one theory is that they smell some chemical released by algae in the water. Apparently they can find water at close range by seeing the reflections of the sky on the surface.