Interfecus

Where in NZ is your mum's place? They're only found in the wild in the south island and up in Northland in the north island, nowhere near Wanganui. I bought 5 WTF tadpoles late last year for $2 each and raised them in a golfish bowl. All five emerged from the water around christmas time and I still have all of them in an 80L terrarium, big enough to fit them for life. At $2.50 I think you should just buy and raise a few of them, this is nothing next to the cost of a terrarium to keep them in. If you really want to catch them, they can usually be found clinging to plants anywhere up to waist height. Tadpoles can be found in ditches and ponds wherever a population is established. Here are a few tips:


Tadpole Food:
Pour boiling water into a mug. Add a few pieces of sliced cucumber. Microwave on high for 1 minute or until it almost boils over. Use a teatowel or oven gloves to take the mug out and tip the water out against the edge of te kitchen sink. Fill and empty several times with cold water to cool it. Take out the slices of cucumber, hold them over the sink in a stack, and stick your thumb through the centre. This will push out the seeds in the centre. Rinse the cucumber and give the slices to the tadpoles.

Cleaning:
The more frequent the better. I raised all five of the tadpoles I bought without any deaths by changing the water in the bowl every two days.

Frog food:
Vestigial winged fruitflies are definitely the best food for young whistling tree frogs. Easy to culture, prolific, nutritious and easy to catch. When they get larger you can feed them house flies. Mine are still on the fruitflies and will be for many months yet.

Terrarium:
Minimum 45cm high to let them climb. Try to have some reaonably tall plants so that they can clamber around. These frogs can easily climb the vertical glass walls so the terrarium must be completely enclosed. I had 4 cable holes (1 in each corner) in my terrarium which I covered with a soft mesh. The terrarium must have a lid to keep in moisture but small holes are fine. A shallow bowl of water must be kept in there so that they can swim, but tree frogs don't have webbed feet and can occasionally drown in deeper water. I use a green granite bowl buried in the soil and my solution is to keep java moss in the bowl, almost to the surface.Frogs can drink from the bowl but can't drown. Evaporation from the water bowl will probably keep the terrarium moist enough that only an occasional spray from a misting bottle is required to keep up a high humidity.

Soil & Planting:
The soil must contain no fertilisers of any sort as these are highly toxic to frogs. Fertiliser runoff from farms is one of the main reasons for the decline of frog populations worldwide. Ordinary topsoil is ideal for this. Alternatively, just use soil from an area in your garden that hasn't been fertilised for at least a year. Plants should be removed from their pots before being put in the terrarium, their roots should be washed out to remove as much of the soil as possible, and they should be replanted in the terrarium. I use a layer of gravel 4-5 cm thick to hold water and have a layer of garden soil on top, providing a good growing medium for the plants. Ferns and mosses seem to do particularily well in the moist environment.


If you need any other help in setting up your frogs, please ask. much as I can.