Dart Den

Hello everybody! Obviously, I am new to this forum and thought I would introduce myself. My name is Lance and I live near Portland, Oregon. My girlfriend and I have recently been thinking of getting into raising Dart Frogs. We are currently still in the early research phase and are looking for good, updated resources. Therefore, you can probably expect to see a lot of newbie questions coming from me in the near future.

I previously had a chameleon for about 4 years. She died of old age about two years ago. After that, I took a break and then became a bit unsettled in my life. I moved to a new state and have not really been settled enough to get back into exotic animals of any sort. Chameleon keeping was a fantastic learning experience as to the powers of the web and the benefits of having a community to turn to for guidance. I have been bouncing around on various websites and this one just seemed to be very user friendly and isn't connected with a store. So, here I am. Ready to start picking your brains.

So, to start off, I'll give a brief overview of my current plans in the hopes that any major downfalls might be pointed out before I screw anything up.

2. Purchase a glass terrarium.
   We were originally thinking of going all out and setting up a big, pretty terrarium, but after reading info from various sites, it sounds like starting small is better. So, we decided to try a 10 gallon. Now I'm reading that a 20 gallon might be the best choice. What do you guys think?
   
   
3. Set up terrarium
   I like the setup that is shown at Black Jungle except for the fact that there is no false bottom to the terrarium. But the techniques seem to make a very appealing terrarium that can be admired even before anybody sees the frogs. So, I'm thinking of utilising the techniques from that setup to build and plant my terrarium. However, that terrarium does not have a false bottom, which I have read is very important. So, I am thinking of modifying those plans and setting the bottom up like this site describes. The issue I have is that the water is being recycled through the terrarium in the plans from Black Jungle. Is that going to cause a problem?
   
   
4. Get a frog
   We aren't quite sure what we are going to do when the time comes to actually get a frog. It will depend a lot on what is available when the time comes. We are hoping to be ready for a frog before the Northwest Frog Fest in August. If not, we will probably get our first frog there. I have read a few different suggestions on a good first frog and think we will get one of the D.tinctorius species. We would eventually like to breed them. Should we just get a single frog to start with, or jump right in and purchase a few froglets in hopes of getting a breeding pair? Also, how many can we keep in that 20 gallon terrarium? My understanding is that we shouldn't keep more than two in there, but then it will be harder to find a pair.

Okay. I think that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll have more questions as we delve deeper into frog-land. Are there any particularly good sites, message boards, mailing lists, or books that we should be looking at?

Thanks for taking the time to help a newbie.

Hi Lance,
Welcome,
1. I would go 20, the bigger the better IMO.
2. You really just need to do a bit of research on the vivs, many different ways of constructing them. I use a few different methods myself. There are are bunch of good pics out there for ideas.
3.Different species require different space , humidity. temps, ect. Again, the more research, the better. There are tones of great froggers out on the west coast to buy from. NWFF would be a good place to talk to people and compare stuff.
Many of the sites have links to other forums and such.

Good luck,
Rich

Good luck with your frogs, make sure to also read up on what it take to feed the frogs. Its not that hard but you can read all day about frogs and dont wont help you at all from keeping your fruit fly cultures from crashing.

Mike