BrianD

I wanted to share a story about my introduction into this hobby. Hopefully it will shed a little bit of light on the subject of mixing, proper housing, proper maintenance and proper feeding for anybody who is new to this hobby.

For years I had a really nice, super clean and well respected reptile store in my general area. I would go in there at least once a week to obtain feeders for my snakes. They always had a large selection of poison dart frogs in really big, nice looking naturalistic vivariums with live plants, timed lighting schedules with dusk and dawn dimmers and misters. At the time I was interested in snakes, so I paid little attention to them. Eventually I moved away and found a new supplier for my feeders so a year or 2 went by without visiting that particular store. One year I went to Holland with a friend and saw a giant display at the Amsterdam Zoo of these frogs and fell in love instantly. When I came home I went to the pet store where I remembered them having a great display to inquire about them. To my dismay, they no longer kept them or the live plant selection they used to have. I went to the owner and started asking questions. I had no knowledge of any of the forums. In fact, I had no idea what a forum even was. Within minutes of me asking questions I was told, and this is verbatim, "Don't waste your time or money, they wont live very long". This came from a guy who had 25 years in the reptile business. He basically told me that he had spent thousands of dollars and countless hours attempting to care for these animals that were just way "too fragile for a captive environment". Well, needless to say this fueled my drive to figure these fragile little creatures' requirements out and be successful in this hobby.
Within the last 6 months or so I went back to this guy with a homemade business card attempting to sell him some of my offspring. He was not the least bit interested due to his previous experiences, but his wife was! She had a customer come in with a vivarium and 3 frogs who did not want to care for them anymore and gave them to the store. She loved them, he thought of them as money pits. So I sat with him for a couple hours and dug into his previous attempts to see what went wrong. Instantly it became obvious what the problems were. Often times he acquired 4-6 month old frogs from many different species. Mostly leucs and a combination of different kinds of tincs. Once they were put in their display, they often sat there for months. That on top of the temp requirements and feeder insect ignorance was all it took to make him see them as nearly impossible to keep.
As most pet stores do, they were being fed crickets. Many of my larger frogs will take crickets with some enthusiasm, but not for long. They become a nuisance, both to the frogs and the vivarium. Fruit flies are a must in this hobby (IMO, I know others who disagree). Once a steady, affordable supply of flies is available this equation goes out the window. The blue media crap you get from most wholesale supply houses does not support a thriving culture and is expensive to try to keep any colony of animals fed from.
Temps were a major problem as well. His focus was on the lighting, and with a corallight fixture on top of a closed viv in a pet store filled with hot temp reptiles this became a major player too. He actually attempted to fix this by adding a fan and ventilation, but they still died on him in droves.
This led us to the main problem. He was keeping several different species in a vivarium, all of which had reached adult or at least sub-adult ages. The fact of the matter is that there was a major stress issue within his community of frogs that went unseen, and when you don't know any better then you just assume they die for no reason. One won't eat, then another and another. They would lose weight rapidly and die before he could figure out a way to revive them.
After spending some time, showing him how I do it and providing him with some of the basic tools to be successful he is now carrying darts again, with great success. He has set up species specific viv's for older frogs, began feeding them properly and knows what to look for to cut off problems at the start as opposed to waiting until it's too late. Now they are not only an awesome re-addition to his store, but they are a money maker for his business and a great way to establish a new community of dart frog keepers in the area.
I guess my point is that little things like proper feeding and not mixing aggressive animals in small enclosures (by small I mean anything smaller than a COUNTRY!) is key to the proper keeping of sensitive animals like these frogs are. It doesn't take much to make a failure into a success if the correct steps are taken.

I hope some of you will read this and understand how important the little things in dart frog husbandry really matter. Cutting corners, pushing the "acceptable" practices and ignoring the warnings of people more experienced than you are all possibly detrimental to your capability of success.
With the internet at your fingertips and the willingness to help from thousands of people "in the know" there is no excuse to not be successful in this hobby. We all want YOU to be successful, just like those of us who are. There is no benefit for a true hobbiest who cares about the future of his hobby to hope you fail, and to many of us one of the most important, fundamental issues is helping those who want the help.

OK, I'm done....

Happy Frogging!!!!!

Socalsam

Good story and points Brian.

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A few frogs.

Rich Frye

Good story Brian. It just goes to show that research is needed in advance (before you buy) by even very experienced herpers.

I posted the following on Dart Den in 2007.

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I want to start this post off by saying that each and every one of my vivs are mixed species tanks. That's right , every one.
It seems that at least once a week I read a newbie post on one of the boards asking what species can be mixed. I thought I would start a thread stating what species could or should be mixed.
As I said , each and every one of my vivs is a mixed tank. I have Dendrobates in almost every one . I have bug species in every one. Springtails of many different types. Rolie-polies. I am told that I may have fungus gnats, not sure though. Many bugs that I can't even ID! It seems that the bugs do very well with the dendrobates and I seldom have any issues. I would say that crickets in my mind are very evil little creatures and will never be purposely introduce into any of my vivs but other than that most bugs are welcome additions to my mixed species tanks. No too happy to see big old spiders in my vivs , but I really don't go too nuts over them. I find them, I kill them when I can, done.
On a more serious note though, the two times I have attempted mixed Dart tanks they both ended in what some may call successful, but what i call far from that. I have mixed "arboreal' with ground dwelling (terribilis with intermedius) and they got along just fine. No aggression, no cross infections, no hybridization, no anything, including no breeding. They were in-fact the ONLY tank I had running that was not producing one single egg, not one egg. At the time each and every other tank was "successfully" producing good eggs. My second attempt at a mixed dart tank produced the same exact "successes". No aggression in a big old tank but not breeding either. Tincs mixed with thumbs. Nothing good to report other than the fact that they did not kill each other. What did I learn? Mixed species tanks good. Bugs with darts will always work. Mixed dendrobates tanks bad. Mixed Dart tanks will never be as "successful" as single dart species tanks.



Rich

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Please enjoy Fryebrothersfrogs.com

BrianD

Which is exactly the message I was hoping people would get from it. I did it, and see it almost daily, the people from other herp or marine hobbies that assume that since they have been successful there these shouldn't be much different. They are, and as all animals they have their required niche but these tend to be much less forgiving.

I did see that post you made when you made it. Kinda cracked me up, but then again I have a sick sense of humor