I decided to make a journal to document my ADF tadpole journey. Mostly because I could barely find any info on them and all the info I can find is really conflicting and I also just want to document my journey. I am really busy though, I work a lot and taking care of tads is turning out to be really time consuming. So I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update this but I definitely will whenever something significant happens. And probably give at least a weekly recap. Please excuse any typos, I mostly use my tablet and my autocorrect hates me.
So I'm already a couple weeks into my journey so I'm going to try to remember everything up until now as best as I can. I guess I will start from the beginning. I was down to one lone ADF, Ed, (he just turned 2 btw, but recently has been floating a lot and stopped eating. Kinda seems like he has dropsy :/ ) so a few months ago I decided to get some friends for him. It took me months to find a pet store that had them in stock, but finally found some at a pet supplies plus an hour away from me. I bought 4 on May 11. They were all very skinny, and looked young. I thought I was buying babies. On the way home already one was floating in the bag and after I got home and got them in the q tank he crawled out of the water and was just hanging out on the side of the glass, fully out of the water. I squirted him with water but he continued floating in the water on and off for the rest of the day and in the morning he was on his back at the bottom of the tank dead.
The second day another frog died without displaying and sickness symptoms. The remaining 2 seemed fine. About 2 weeks later they boy, still nameless, started singing 12 hours a day (no exaggeration) everyday. And that's when I started suspecting I didn't buy babies. After feeding them everyday they plumped up pretty quickly, so that plus the singing and they tads (which they don't reach sexual maturity until 9 months of age) leads me to believe these were someone's pets, that for whatever reason they returned to the petstore.
On May 23 I found hundreds of eggs in my tank and decided yo try to raise them. Everything I saw online said to use a turkey baster to suck the eggs out and put them in a cup. I accidentally popped pretty much every egg during the transfer. They were laying eggs everyday so I tried everyday, if I did manage to get eggs into the tank they would all pop overnight and in the following days. So I started leaving the eggs in the tank and on May 31 I found about 18 tads in the tank. I moved them to a separate cup with some duckweed.
My frogs pretty much continuously lay, every week a couple do die but they are so busy I am up to 60 tads! I did have 61 but one died. I do have some from the original batch though. Maybe 8 or so. They are pretty big but still don't have legs.
But now it's 230am and I am very tired so I think I'm going to stop for now. I will throw in a couple pictures but not all, yet, I have tonssss. In the next entry I'm going to talk about my tank setup, what didn't work for me and what did, including things I read online that said absolutely won't work but do for me. Plus I will include info from a girl I've been talking to online that's also raising tads. Some things have worked for her but not me and vice versa. This hobby or whatever definitely seems to be an individual thing. It's not a one size fits all. What works for some does not work for others.
Here are the frogs the day I bought them
Some of the eggs
The first batch of tadpoles I had
And the 60 tads I have now, there is 61 in the pic but one died
So I'm already a couple weeks into my journey so I'm going to try to remember everything up until now as best as I can. I guess I will start from the beginning. I was down to one lone ADF, Ed, (he just turned 2 btw, but recently has been floating a lot and stopped eating. Kinda seems like he has dropsy :/ ) so a few months ago I decided to get some friends for him. It took me months to find a pet store that had them in stock, but finally found some at a pet supplies plus an hour away from me. I bought 4 on May 11. They were all very skinny, and looked young. I thought I was buying babies. On the way home already one was floating in the bag and after I got home and got them in the q tank he crawled out of the water and was just hanging out on the side of the glass, fully out of the water. I squirted him with water but he continued floating in the water on and off for the rest of the day and in the morning he was on his back at the bottom of the tank dead.
The second day another frog died without displaying and sickness symptoms. The remaining 2 seemed fine. About 2 weeks later they boy, still nameless, started singing 12 hours a day (no exaggeration) everyday. And that's when I started suspecting I didn't buy babies. After feeding them everyday they plumped up pretty quickly, so that plus the singing and they tads (which they don't reach sexual maturity until 9 months of age) leads me to believe these were someone's pets, that for whatever reason they returned to the petstore.
On May 23 I found hundreds of eggs in my tank and decided yo try to raise them. Everything I saw online said to use a turkey baster to suck the eggs out and put them in a cup. I accidentally popped pretty much every egg during the transfer. They were laying eggs everyday so I tried everyday, if I did manage to get eggs into the tank they would all pop overnight and in the following days. So I started leaving the eggs in the tank and on May 31 I found about 18 tads in the tank. I moved them to a separate cup with some duckweed.
My frogs pretty much continuously lay, every week a couple do die but they are so busy I am up to 60 tads! I did have 61 but one died. I do have some from the original batch though. Maybe 8 or so. They are pretty big but still don't have legs.
But now it's 230am and I am very tired so I think I'm going to stop for now. I will throw in a couple pictures but not all, yet, I have tonssss. In the next entry I'm going to talk about my tank setup, what didn't work for me and what did, including things I read online that said absolutely won't work but do for me. Plus I will include info from a girl I've been talking to online that's also raising tads. Some things have worked for her but not me and vice versa. This hobby or whatever definitely seems to be an individual thing. It's not a one size fits all. What works for some does not work for others.
Here are the frogs the day I bought them
Some of the eggs
The first batch of tadpoles I had
And the 60 tads I have now, there is 61 in the pic but one died