L & H Frog Journal
African Dwarf Frogs -  Hymenochirus boettgeri
page 2

5-15-02 Lucky, our tadpole, is being fed one to two droppers full of infusoria a day. His movement slows when the temperature of his tank falls below 68 degrees. Our daphnia colony seems to be living in the gravel in their holding tank. Attempting to suction them out with a dropper proves to be a bit difficult. Our infusoria culture has bits of green floating things with little black specks. If we had a microscope, we could check this out further. We have been giving Lucky at least one dropper that contained some sort of living daphnia per day. With that daphnia, a bit of flake fish food had been introduced to Lucky's holding tank. Yesterday we also noticed that Lucky was eating the flake food as well as surfing the surface of the tank for micro- organisms. However, yesterday we saw that there are several less developed daphnia in his tank through our feedings of them to Lucky. We are still contemplating ordering more daphnia and this time putting them in a holding tank with no gravel. - L

[Lucky, our first ADF tadpole] < - ADF tadpole 1/8" long.

5-16-02 Last night I spent more than a hour photographing Lucky, George, and Jim. George & Jim seemed to want to try to escape the tank while having the top off for the photos. One of them while standing on the pagoda with his head mostly out of the water looked like he was trying to sing visibly moving air in his throat. We couldn't hear anything over the filter. This morning I managed to rescue Lucky. He was stuck in the gravel. I used the dropper to suck him out. He is swimming though oddly. We'll see how he fairs. 8:10 a.m. - H

When I awoke 9:30 a.m. Lucky was feeding and swimming normally slowly at times and occasionally in quick spurts. H apparently found Lucky in the gravel by spotting Lucky's glossy eyes. - L

5-17-02 Lucky was swimming very oddly last night. He was seemingly have a difficult time staying afloat and drifting to the bottom of the tank. It is confirmed this morning that he has died. We are quite hopeful that George & Jim will lay many more eggs, and we will have more tadpoles. Several possible things led to Lucky's demise getting stuck in the gravel, getting saved from the gravel, varying tank temperature, and eating of flake food. In the future, we'll try to be sure to not add flake food to the tadpole tanks. The pH checked out ok, but the temperatures are ranging a lot with cool evenings and warm days. So, we'll just have to see.-L
[One of our ADF's 2002]

5-19-02 More daphnia has been ordered, and the gravel will be removed from the holding tank. Some daphnia have survived in the both holding tanks. I learned from some research on the web that bloodworms are actually midge fly larvae. We will try to obtain some live worms for our frogs. Hopefully, it will give them some long term food and something to do. It's my understanding if the pet stores don't have them, that live bait stores [for fishing] may carry them. - L

5-20-02 On a lighter note, on Saturday we had a party. We were looking at George & Jim.One of them was swimming oddly seeming to eat something huge and sort of clear. He looked like he was having convulsions or froggie seizures. We got all concerned and watched more closely. H told us that he was just shedding his skin. The conversation around us died down while we all gathered round watching this very interesting moment. We laughed at ourselves and our keen interest in the frogs over whatever we had been talking about.

H noticed many more eggs in George & Jim's tank last night at least 50. I transferred those that weren't already adhered to plants to the holding tank E with a tiny glass eye dropper. We're very hopeful about having more little tadpoles to watch. - L

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