Firstly let me begin by saying that I am not a frog expert, but however due to good luck or good fortune in the past we have had a number of spawnings of Litoria infrafrenata (Giant green tree frogs) occur in the shop. What I hope to pass on in this article is not a great in depth paper on the breeding of this species; but rather just an insight into a few of the dumb things we have done, and also some of the things that have gone right. I hope that if you are ever in a position to need this info that it may be of some help.

The pair of frogs responsible for all our spawnings, are the result of a mating between two animals that we had sold previously to a good customer. The animals in question were around eighteen months to two years old at the time of spawning.

I won’t go into a great detail regarding how the animals came to spawn, but they first spawned in an enclosure, not long after all other frogs were removed due to sales. The enclosure was kept at around 25 –30 degrees celcius, it had a moderate size waterfall in one corner, with heat provided by both ambient room temperature and an enclosed incandescent heat lamp. The waterfall was fed from a reservoir of water that comprises around one third of the floor area of the enclosure.

Now due to the sudden ( and very pleasant) surprise of being confronted with a large egg mass in the bottom of the enclosure, we were forced to do some very quick research on how to raise the tadpoles. The initial information that we pulled from books put us on the right track. It was however not to stop us from making some serious boo boos. We collected the spawn mass from the tank and transferred it to a plastic container that held around 7 litres of water. We introduced an aquarium heater which was dialled in to produce a temperature of 26 degrees c, and also provided some mild agitation to water with an airstone. The tadpoles hatched between 24 – 48 hrs after the discovery of the egg mass.

So far so good. The tadpoles started to grow reasonably quickly while they were being supplied with some pond grown Elodea that was covered in algae. I was also at this stage introducing finely crumbled fish flakes to the water as well, as I had been told that this would assist in the growth rate of the taddies.

Lesson number 1: Don’t use Fish food as a staple part of a tadpoles diet.

Even though we were performing partial water changes on the tadpole’s enclosure, it was very rapidly becoming putrid, and vastly overstocked with quickly growing tadpoles. Then “A Bright Idea” hits. Why not make a taddie high rise?? I proceeded down to the local store and purchased four tubs which I plumbed together so that water would cascade from the top container, down through each subsequent box until it reached a reservoir at the bottom. A small pump would then pick up the water and start the cycle all over again.

Lesson number 2: Keep it simple Stupid.

As usual over engineering caused nothing but problems. Within two hours of having placed all of our tadpoles in the “Taddie Hilton” 98% of the poor guys were dead. A large number of them had been drawn against the overflow screens that were in place to stop the tadpoles from falling from one tank to the next. All of the rest of them seemed to be suffering from some form of poisoning.

Lesson number 3: Scrub out any container that you are going to use.

Apart from the obvious deaths from physical trauma, all I could put the remainder of the taddie’s deaths down to was contamination from the brand new plastic containers. I hear you say “HUH, didn’t he say brand new??”. When they produce tupperware type containers, they use a lubricant on the injection machine’s die that stops the plastic from sticking to the mould. It is very important that you remove this by scrubbing the inner surfaces of the container with an abrasive such as a kitchen scourer.

Lesson number 4: Keep it clean

Anyway, we were lucky enough to get a second chance at things about three weeks after all this occurred. The parents spawned again, and I was determined not to repeat the same mistakes again.

This time we set the egg mass up in four individual containers (well scrubbed) each holding around 12 litres of reverse osmosis water (rainwater will do). Each container had an aquarium heater, each container was provided with gentle aeration to keep things moving. Temperatures were maintained at 24 degrees c, and water changes performed every three days. All possible detritus was syphoned out of the tubs with each water change. We were on our way! At this stage we had moved over to blanched Cos Lettuce leaves as a food source. This works quite well but does still pollute the water quite badly.

At the suggestion of Cathrynn Martin, who breeds frogs regularly, we moved over to Endive Lettuce which we froze for 24 hours. This causes the leaves to become quite brittle, and allows you to crumble the green material into the water with ease. The taddies Love it! Best of all it is not bad as far as pollution goes, and if you stick to the tops of the leaves, then there is little waste to clean up.

We got our first Morphlings out at around seven weeks from spawning, but some of the other tadpoles were still not much larger than they were at the age of 7 days. This led me back to the phone to some experienced frog breeders who suggested raising the temperature form the 24 –25 degrees that we had been holding the animals at, up to 30 degrees c. The difference in growth was quite marked.

Lesson number 5: Keep ‘em warm.

Within the week we were getting between two to four tadpoles metamorphosing every couple of days. It is important that you keep the water changes happening though, as apparently the larger tadpoles secrete a hormone into the water, which inhibits the growth of the smaller tadpoles. I don’t have any evidence to back this up, but from what I’ve seen, it appears it may be true.

So to sum up.

1: Feed the Tadpoles on pond algae or frozen Endive Lettuce

2: Keep the water clean

3: Scrub out any containers that you intend to use

4: Keep the water warm!

5: Don’t use any other foods

6: The Kiss principle works ( Keep it simple stupid )